PROFIsafe mechanisms are extending to OPC UA: users will benefit from an open technology and cross-manufacturer communication at the control level for both standard and safety-related data.

How does open, integrated safety enable a competitive advantage versus traditional practices? And with the focus on safety increasing in recent years, is there a way to make safety easier to manage and deploy? Here follows a look at PROFIsafe -past, present, and future.

Not sure what PROFIsafe is or how it works? Need to get up to speed quickly on the world’s most installed functional safety network? Here are some resources to gain more knowledge –from very short to in-depth.

Sometimes time goes very fast; a year ago PI published my welcome article on PROFIsafe in PROFINEWS. As everyone expected the number of PROFIsafe nodes installed has reached 5.4 million in year 2015. There is no doubt that this trend will continue for the coming years because of the transition of fieldbus technology from PROFIBUS to PROFINET and market acceptance of safe PLCs for functional safety of the machine.

Functional safety allows safety functions to be defined that can actively react to a ‘security’ attack. New standards are being drafted that cross the divide between safety and security.

Of particular interest to manufacturers of PROFIsafe controllers is the new F-Host test tool for PROFIsafe V2.61. The F-Host test tool will be used by PI test labs for official certification tests and by vendors of F-Host controllers for in-house tests.