The Status of Fieldbus Communication in International
Standardization and the Market

Manfred Patz
Softing Gmbh.

Efforts are underway, both worldwide an in Europe, to define standards for fieldbusses. There are consortia of manufacturers, the Fieldbus Foundation and the Open Device Net Vendors Association being two examples, which are trying to confer standards in this area, where they have typically not existed before. The talk will discuss the benefits of this standards effort, offer PROFIBUS as an example of an existing standard, and mention a possible future direction, namely communication via Device Description Languages.