Now, the company is the first to ship products that comply with the new WirelessHART standard. “Our first shipments [of WirelessHART-compatible products] went out of our Chanhassen, Minn., facility this past week,” said Peter Zornio, chief strategic officer for Emerson Process Management, during a Monday press conference at the Exchange.

Products galore

Emerson has begun shipping WirelessHART products from its Smart Wireless range of pressure, flow, level, temperature, vibration, pH, and discrete transmitters and gateways. Also on the list are the company’s AMS Suite predictive maintenance and Wireless SNAP-ON software, 375 Field Communicator, and native wireless interface of DeltaV and Ovation digital systems. A stream of future new products from Emerson will also use the WirelessHART standard, including the soon-to-be-released valve position transmitter, and the Smart Wireless THUM Adapter that will unleash stranded diagnostics data in legacy devices.

Since its approval by the HART Communication Foundation in September 2007 as part of the HART 7 specification, WirelessHART has been gaining momentum. WirelessHART recently received approval by the International Electrotechnical Commission as an IEC/PAF standard.

Critical mass

While Emerson is the first company to ship WirelessHART products, it will be far from the only company to do so. And that’s good news for end-users.

“Standards are really a proxy for what customers want, which is lots of interoperable products from the leading vendors,” Zornio noted. “When you look at WirelessHART, you see five of the top seven leading automation suppliers already committed to delivering WirelessHART products. There’s a total of 16 companies actively working on products,” Zornio added. “So we believe that WirelessHART has the critical mass in the industry to be a dependable, long-lasting standard that customers can invest in and feel comfortable that their investment is protected.”