plugfest Features over 30 Engineers Across Companies to Test Devices
PI North America, the non-profit trade organization supporting PROFIBUS, PROFINET, IO-Link, and omlox technologies in North America, in cooperation with the PROFI Interface Center, held its fourth North American PROFINET Plugfest, on April 15–16, 2026, hosted by Emerson at a company facility in Eden Prairie, Minn.
Thirty-six engineers from 13 companies brought seven controllers and fifteen devices to the plugfest. Participating companies included Banner Engineering, Cisco, Dunkermotoren, Emerson, Grid Connect, Hilscher, InduSol, Phoenix Contact, Real Time Automation, SICK, Siemens, and Valmet.
plugfest provided a chance for engineers to test their PROFINET devices and controllers in an environment that comes close to the real automation world and were able to evaluate them before formal certification.
Testing was carried out in small groups around individual controllers with the devices circulating among the various controllers prior to creating one large network.
“We’ve never had participation to this level at a PROFINET Plugfest in North America. The devices were many and varied; there were drives, I/Os, virtual PLCs, switches, DCSs, process instruments, network analyzers, and the official PI test lab setup for rapid troubleshooting,” said Michael Bowne, Executive Director at PI North America.
