Wireless standard strengthens board

GE to help drive the Commercialisation of the ISA100

GE’s worldwide industrial, communications, energy and process experience is helping to drive industry recognition of the ISA100 wireless communications standard, with the addition of GE to the ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute Governing Board.

GE is a supporter of the ISA100 family of open standards, which is a reliable, flexible and deterministic communications protocol that helps streamline and optimize the integration of industrial processes’ automation applications. This protocol makes it easier for different equipment and systems to communicate and work together.

“As a leader in technical innovation and open standards, GE is excited to participate in establishing the ISA100 standards,” said Melanie Cook, communications general manager for GE’s Digital Energy business. “Our customers rely on GE to deliver reliable solutions for their mission-critical communication networks and are increasingly demanding products that are interoperable for easier infrastructure deployments. From Smart Grid modernization to oil and gas and industrial automation applications, the ISA100 standards will help us in meeting our customers’ requirements.”

The ISA100.11a Industrial Wireless Networking Standard, approved in September 2009, is the first in the ISA100 family of standards. This mesh standard protocol helps companies build interoperable communications equipment. As a result, manufacturing and processing plants can create, modify and optimize beginning-to-end operations quickly, cost-effectively, and seamlessly.

Future ISA100 standards will include support for backhaul functionality, factory automation and other key-use cases. Details on the approved standard, the ISA100 roadmap, and use-case presentations are available on the website.

“The addition of GE expands coverage of industry verticals represented in the WCI and gives us another great resource for ensuring conformance, interoperability, and marketplace adoption of standards that best meet the needs of users around the world,” said Andre Ristaino, Wireless Compliance Institute managing director. “GE’s depth of technology expertise in process industries and creative application of technology is impressive. We look forward to working with the GE team to help improve communications for a new generation of process innovation.”