The month of April will be busy for the various Regional PI Associations (RPAs) and PI Training Centers (PITCs) around the world. There are many trainings and events going on to give you an opportunity to interact with our many 'PROFInetworkers' across the globe.
The time until a new technology is established, its finer points are clarified, and users accept it is usually suspenseful, sometimes nerve-racking, and always exciting. That’s how it’s been for the IO-Link community for the past decade, but now IO-Link has arrived on the market and is being used across the globe.
![Understand Switches to Master Industrial Networking [Tech Tip]](http://profinews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Thumnail_Youtube_Play-feature.jpg)
Networking is constantly increasing as more and more devices are exchanging data. In addition, a growing number of sensors are in use to determine all maintenance-relevant information and network loads are increasing. Dedicated switches can help manage the ever-increasing amounts of network data.
Many PI experts are active in national and international standardization organizations and have taken on strategically important management functions there. Two exemplary areas include the integration of TSN into PROFINET and the specification of semantic identifiers for device description.
In the process industry, and in automation technology in particular, digitalization is currently a hot topic where the goal is to be able to respond to plant and market events quicker and more effectively than before. This article sets the technological basis for digitalization in the process industry.
PI Brazil has built a PROFINET Online Academy. It is a free, online webinar platform, organized into specific PROFINET topics covering the basics of Ethernet all the way up to best practices when developing with PROFINET.
Welcome to 2019! In the spirit of developing networks among colleagues and among automation devices, this month's issue focuses on PROFINET device development. Due to the rich community of solution providers and resources available to developers, adding a PROFINET interface to an automation device is both easy and future-proof.
In this month's issue: Germany prepares for its biennial PI Konferenz in March, the RPA Chairman in Ireland receives an award of distinction, and in the USA, a series of training classes is announced.
