PROFIBUS PA cables can land in hazardous environments; Ethernet cables cannot --yet. However, PROFINET is still a great backbone in process applications for today and tomorrow.

At a joint symposium, PROFIBUS & PROFINET International (PI) and NAMUR e.V. discussed the use of Ethernet in the process industry. The goal of the event was to evaluate, coordinate and prioritize the requirements placed on an Ethernet communication system for process automation.

The IO-Link Community met in Frankfurt, Germany for its 16th IO-Link Interoperability Workshop. 75 participants from 33 companies spent both days intensively putting their new IO-Link devices through their paces. The participant turnout also set a new record in the number of different countries from which attending companies originated.

That was one of the questions posed during a wide-ranging panel discussion held at the 2016 General Assembly Meeting. The panel quickly turned into the highlight of the event and touched on many forward looking topics relating to industry, workforce development, connectivity, and edge computing.

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.