The promise of effortless sensor installation and network configuration, along with effortless diagnostics when something goes wrong, are all only one little specification away. And that specification, FDI, or field device interface, is due to be born soon. To thoroughly mix metaphors, heaven is but a step away for automation and instrumentation engineers.

“Everyone wins,” says Terry Krouth, chief technology officer for Emerson Process Management, the Austin, Texas-based automation supplier. The intent of FDI is to specify uniform integration features within automation devices for process industries, across all major host systems, devices and protocols. “FDI will make it extremely easy for customers to integrate devices and systems. For suppliers, it means vastly reduced efforts in creating device drivers . Without FDI, device integration sinks back to a nightmare.”

FDI is a joint effort by, well, just about everyone. Participants in the FDI Cooperation, which has in part grown out of the EDDL Cooperation Team, include FDT Group, Fieldbus Foundation, Hart Communication Foundation, OPC Foundation and Profibus Nutzerorganisation. On the supplier side, there are ABB, Emerson, Endress+Hauser, Honeywell, Invensys, Siemens and Yokogawa. And that is just a small sample of the names involved, as FDI includes end-users as well, among them Chevron and Shell.

There are two realities driving the push behind FDI. The first is that since manufacturing began, when a group determines that it needs new equipment, the need is for something to perform a task, not necessarily for integration into any system. The result can be anything but integration.

After all, if we ignore all-new sites or simple replacement of previous performers, the primary need is for some sort of new or newly-expanded functionality. Seamless integration is not a functionality. Integration into a multi-disciplinary, top-down system is not a functionality. Integration into a complex network is not a functionality. Stripped down to its bare bones, the functionality is for putting something to work for a specific need. Integration? Until very recently, plant-wide integration (let alone multi-plant-wide integration) simply was not practiced.

The result is that there are a huge number of sites that are museums of historical solutions to historical needs. Some sub-systems in these are well documented and rational. Some, less documented, are at least capable of reverse engineering. But some require industrial archeology. Even when everything is being controlled on a rationalized 4-20-milliamp (mA) backbone or a foundation protocol, every part and parcel could easily have some wrinkle, some connector, some tweak that makes it (unfortunately) unique. A universal installer-fixer such as FDI would be the very definition of sweet.

The second driver behind FDI is the continuing and rapid development of digital solutions. Every week, day and hour, new capabilities climb over the shoulders of earlier ones. The result is a combinatorial explosion, a situation in which, unless a device is standards-based, engineers have to expend a lot of sweat to harness all of the device’s capabilities and integration hooks.

But, because FDI is still future tech, what is the automation engineer to do in the meantime? Says Charles (Charlie) Piper, program manager, systems DCS group for Plano, Texas-based vendor Invensys Operations Management, much of the drive behind sophistication in device and network configuration and diagnosis is due to asset management needs. “And these have evolved quickly,” he adds.

“If a device is certified for Foundation Fieldbus or Profibus, or any of the current industrial standards, it should be relatively easy to hook up, if you don’t need a lot of depth to diagnostics,” Piper points out. “You need only three things for basic connections. First, you want consistent power, whether it’s power over the network or a device-specific power supply. Second is a device coupler, which conceptually is little more than a glorified terminal strip. Auto termination, short-circuit protection and other bells and whistles are available here. Finally, especially in hazardous areas, you need safety elements—explosion-proof enclosures, that kind of thing—that make the installation intrinsically safe.”

Basic diagnostics are built into such devices, such as when a device falls off the network. “But more sophisticated diagnosis is demanded when you take an asset-management view,” Piper says. “You want more than just something that says that the DVs (data values from the sensor) are wrong or missing. The more you depend on an asset, the more you want to know why something has gone wrong and what the right fix might be.”

More diagnostics means more electronics at the sensor. “When plants migrate from hand-held diagnostics,” Piper says, “mobile solutions provide more powerful capabilities, so ...