to exist. Sallyanne Ofner, president of Denver-based Levelese, Inc., a maker of wired and wireless liquid level sensors, says “When watching the discussions about [the] SP100 committee and WirelessHart, I felt thrown back into the late ‘80s when SP50 was extending into digital communications to bring some kind of order to product-to-product interfaces. It seems normal and healthy, though sometimes confusing and difficult to accommodate [the conflict], while the competing technologies are shaken out.” Levelese instruments use Hart and other communication methods, and the company resells Phoenix Contact gateways.

Flowserve Corp., manufacturer of pumps, valves, seals and other components, announced in April that it had joined ISA100 WCI as a supplier member. Senior Product Portfolio Manager Scott Wilkerson tells Automation World, “We have considered all protocols currently on the market and review opportunities according to customer demand. Joining ISA100 WCI gives us access to a technical and user ecosystem that enables us to accelerate our ISA100.11 product offerings. We look forward to offering our customers products based on the global ISA100.11a wireless standard.”

Schosker said Pepperl+Fuchs, which makes WirelessHart gateways and adapters, is “currently monitoring the activities of ISA SP100 and have chose to delay R&D investment in this particular standard. Pepperl+Fuchs supports SP100 and expects to develop products based on this specification once economic justification has been met and we have customer support to move forward with investment and R&D resources.”

Siemens is involved with both standards. It released WirelessHart products last year in Europe, and this year in the U.S., said Michael Cushing, process instrumentation manager. Siemens also supports other wireless protocols more commonly found in discrete operations such as packaging. On the German product development side, he says, “we’re active members of the ISA100 standard, and from a product perspective, it’s on the roadmap.”

Martin (“Marty”) Zielinski, who represents Emerson on the WC12 convergence committee, says, “Emerson Process Management has over 5,100 operating WirelessHart networks at sites around the world today [so] backward compatibility with the large installed base of IEC 62591 based devices is increasingly important. Emerson Process Management supports convergence, provided that this backward compatibility can be achieved.”
 

Status of convergence

Storey sums it up: “A lot of money has been invested in the two technologies. We have reached a point where the act of converging will cost a lot of money and possibly result in stranded investments.  The costs associated with having a fragmented market, however, have driven groups to discuss ways to accomplish convergence. ”

From the standpoint of the market, standards convergence is important because it enables more rapid market growth, says Harry Forbes of the ARC Research Group. “From a technical standpoint, the challenges to converge even two standards are very difficult, and trying to combine three global standards [counting China’s WIA-PA] is even harder. The challenge is more difficult because the ‘voice of the end user’ is not a single voice by any means. Most importantly though, [users] have stated their highest priority is to achieve a single standard going forward in order to minimize total cost of ownership.”

According to Ian Verhappen, director of system integrator Industrial Automation Networks Inc. in Wainwright, Alberta Canada, “End user involvement will be required if resolution of the three-part standard is to be resolved. Like anything, ‘money talks’ and until end users are comfortable that they will have life-cycle (20+ years) support for anything they install for permanent use, the next step will be some form of gateway that will ‘translate’ from one wireless protocol to another.”

Vanhappen adds, “We all know this isn’t going to be over quickly but it will be the end users that decide.”

Renee Robbins Bassett , rbassett@automationworld.com, is Managing Editor of Automation World .

See also: Wireless Choices Abound: Ford and Rockwell Speak Out

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Hart Communication Foundation ( www.hartcomm.org)
ISA100 Committee ( www.isa.org/ISA100)
ISA Wireless Compliance Institute ( www.isa100wci.org)