Instrumentation network lowers distributed control to field level

Two recent events resulted in a major change of course in process control industry. The first one was the standardization efforts of IAS-SP50 committee resulted in standardizing the physical layer of FIELDBUS and the second one was the joining of two rival, vendor driven FIELDBUS camps ISP and WorldFIP. These two events finally won the confidence of the industry and gave a thumbs-up to FIELDBUS. This new standard offers so many cost advantages over the existing 4-20 mA standard for installation, maintenance, diagnostic and calibration, the industry has to adapt the new technology to remain costwise competitive. This paper reviews pros and cons of the new technology and mentions actual field trial results and tremendous cost advantages offered by the new technology.