Annual fieldbus conference in Britain

Preliminary details of their 20th Anniversary Conference programme

The PROFIBUS Group has announced preliminary details of the conference programme to be presented at its 20th Anniversary event on 26th June at the Stratford Manor Hotel, Warwickshire (GB).

Stratford Manor Hotel

The conference will open with a State of The (Industrial) Nation address from Brian Holliday, one of the "founding fathers" of The UK's PROFIBUS Group, addressing factors such as government, manufacturing, industrial infra-structure and skills, and why investment and standards such as PROFIBUS & PROFINET remain key to growth and prosperity.

PI Chairman Karsten Schneider will then present the keynote speech, bringing important news of updates on the technology including PROFINET for Process industry applications, performance achievements and the latest developments on such key areas as PROFIenergy, the organisation's innovative solution for massive energy-savings during production idle times.

Case Studies
James Powell, author of "Catching the Process Fieldbus" and a regular presenter at previous conferences will present a case study of a customer who has switched from Ex HART to IS PROFIBUS PA utilizing a multi-vendor solution, showing that PROFIBUS PA is not just for large sites and revealing the economics of using PA and IS instead of Ex construction.

Other practical presentations and case studies will be delivered by David Bray of United Utilities on the subject of lightning protection while an expert from BAE Systems submarine division will address key issues of safety and security in systems design and implementation.

Master Classes and Workshops
There will be a number of Master Classes and Workshops, covering matters such as the new Certified PROFIBUS System Designer course. Delivered by the Group's Technical Officer, Andy Verwer, this presentation shows the need for such certified training and outlines the course content.

Peter Thomas of Control Specialists will discuss how the use of PROFINET can take you into the realms of the IT world, which is very different from the one in which control engineers usually operate in. He will show how WireShark can be used as a tool for base lining the operation of your PROFINET network and will initially look at normal Internet traffic frames such as ping and web site calls to gain a better understanding of how it can be of benefit.

Other workshops will be presented covering tools and techniques for health checking and trouble shooting, PROFIBUS device configuration and device commissioning using FDT/DTM and EDDL based tools.