It took a lot of work by our marketing committee to get us here but I especially would like to thank our North American marketing coordinator, Maggie Carlson, for her relentless efforts to pull this all together. We will continue to tweak and improve it so your feedback regarding the format and content is invited.
Our integrated brewing demonstration has continued its tour throughout Europe. There are a few more events yet this year, including the SPS Drives show in Nuremberg, where it will be featured. If you have not had a chance to see this fantastic demonstration of FDT® Technology working in a mixed process and factory Automation application, I encourage you to stop by the booth and spend some time seeing it in action. More than 25 member products are integrated and on display. The effort for this demonstration was led by the European Marketing Committee headed by Sandra Wesner of Endress+Hauser. Due to increasing job responsibilities, Sandra is not able to continue as the chairperson of this committee, so let me take this opportunity to thank Sandra for her many years of service in key roles within the FDT Group. I am pleased to learn that she will continue to be an active committee member.
The new FDT2™ standard continues to see accelerated marketplace adoption. You have undoubtedly seen the new product announcements by various manufacturers and software providers. We took the next steps forward in July with our first training session regarding the certification of FDT2 DTMs. Our software tool for checking compliance is nearing completion so this was an excellent opportunity for our independent certification test centers as well as device manufacturers to see how the new tool functions and to run it through its paces with some of the newest FDT2 enabled products. We expect that near the end of this year, the first fully certified FDT2 products will be on the marketplace. About that same time we will announce two new independent test centers as part of the global certification network for the FDT standard.
We recently completed some upgrades to our phone system in Belgium to allow easier access to our staff regardless of where they are in the world. This also includes a new U.S. telephone number to make it easier for those in the U.S. to reach our Belgium office. Check out our website for more details - www.fdtgroup.org.
The return from our summer holidays signals the start of the fall travel season for the FDT Group. We have events in the US, Europe, India, Japan, and elsewhere where we have the opportunity to show off the great things that this free and open FDT technology can do. I hope we have the opportunity to meet in person soon at an FDT event near you.
- Hartmut Wallraf
