Think Globally, Act Locally

This has been the PI mantra since the beginning. What does it mean? It means we centralize technology development, and decentralize support for our technologies. In other words, we build standards that are consistent worldwide and then allow individual Regional PI Associations (RPAs) to provide local support for those standards.

Every year, our 24 of RPAs gather together to meet. This year’s event was hosted by the Japanese PROFIBUS Organization (JPO) in Hiroshima, Japan. It was the 30th such meeting. The event also coincided with the JPO’s 21st anniversary celebration in Tokyo.

RPA Meeting

From May 15-17, 2018 the 30th PI Meeting was held in Hiroshima, Japan. The agenda was filled with diverse PI , technology, and marketing topics and more than 20 representatives from 11 countries were part of the meeting.

Presentations of various marketing reports as well as technical presentations around the topic “Industrie 4.0” were given. The technical part included extensive insights into OPC UA, TSN and APL. In addition to that, IO-Link Wireless and IO-Link Safety were also discussed.

Read more here:

• PROFINET Exhibits First Integration of TSN
• PI Standardizes Ethernet in Process Automation
• IO-Link Wireless Specification Ready

It’s truly an exciting time to be involved with the PROFIBUS, PROFINET, and IO-Link technologies. After taking our time to determine the correct Industrie 4.0 and IIoT strategy, PI is moving faster than anyone to advance industrial networking and turn these concepts into reality.

PI Chairman Karsten Schneider and Deputy Chairman Michael Bowne were re-elected to their positions and will continue to serve in these roles.

A big thanks to the JPO for hosting this year’s meeting. It was a great pleasure being invited to Japan. PI looks forward to having the next meeting in 2019 which will be a combined with our PI Competence Centers, Training Centers, and Test Labs.

JPO 21 Year Celebration

Following the meeting in Hiroshima, a select number of participants flew to Tokyo to take part in the JPO’s 21st anniversary celebration. Roughly 140 attendees gathered to hear presentations on the state of industrial networks around the globe.