In North America, additional cities have been confirmed for no-charge PROFINET one-day training classes and additional Certified Network Engineer classes are announced. Free PROFIBUS and PROFINET training is coming to the UK. PI Australia formalizes its Automation Innovation Summit. In Germany IO-Link, PROFIBUS, and PROFIsafe training is scheduled.
Lunch for 1,263 please. In 2015, PI North America fed 1,263 students lunch at the 17 PROFINET one-day training classes. A similar crowd is expected in 2016. Industrie 4.0, Internet of Things, and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are everywhere now, including these PROFINET classes.
Additional classes and events include the fee-based PROFIsafe Designer Training coming in March. Become a “Certified PROFIsafe Designer” by passing the tests there.
Why have an entire section of PROFINEWS dedicated to Regional News? It matters for three reasons. First, it shows the strength of the PI organization on a global scale. Second, if you are a device vendor, it encourages you to explore other such markets with the expectation of local support. And finally, if you are an end-user, it assures that if you start operations in another country there are already experts in place.
News this month from: Germany, where a successful PROFIsafe workshop was held; Italy and Poland, with IO-Link workshops; France, who is hosting three events in early December; and Australia, where they prepare for the 2016 Automation Innovation Summit.
It is great pleasure for me to give you the PROFIsafe Technology updates and its strong position in the market after the first introduction around 15 years ago. Functional safety gets more attention and provides the feasibility to implement safety in machines and at plants. Safety fieldbus communication makes the engineer’s life easier by reducing the complexity of safety engineering and electrical wiring. With more than 4 million installed nodes PROFIsafe technology has established itself in the leading position in the network safety market.
The term ‘security’ alone causes a media storm – one glance at newspapers and online news sites is all it takes and everyone is in the thick of the discussion around cyber security. Automation and communication technology are not spared from this. This can sometimes create the impression that issues surrounding IT security are a new phenomenon. The experts of PI have concerned themselves for many years with the issue of secure operation of communication technology components, which by nature have always been tightly networked. Also new to the discussion is that the areas of safety and security are moving closer together.
Following the PROFIsafe theme of this issue, PI has announced two courses being taught in Karlsruhe on the subject in October. In Italy, a PROFIBUS & PROFINET Day is slated to take place in Naples and an IO-Link Workshop is being offered in Bergamo. A similar IO-Link Workshop will be held in Minnesota, USA as well. ABB has announced two PROFIBUS trainings in Germany in November. The Middle East held its first PROFIday, which is shaping up to be a quarterly event.
New products this month include: PROFINET connectivity for Banner Engineering vision systems and Murrelektronik safety I/O, conformity for HARTING Ethernet connectors, and a new Phoenix Contact PROFIBUS DP to PA coupler.
