Siemens-Not Just for Profibus Anymore

摘要

Some of us came to know Siemens as a process instrument manufacturer many years ago through its excellent line of continuous analyzers, for example, the "Ultramat" and "Oxymat" NDIR and paramagnetic O_2 instruments. Through North American acquisitions like Milltronics, Moore Products and Applied Automation, Siemens' logo has been showing up on an increasing number and variety of process plant devices. However, Siemens PCS 7 (http://tinyurl.com/3n9elu2)-the powerful host system that aims to compete with DCS offerings from process-industry leaders such as Invensys, Emerson, ABB, Honeywell and Yokogawa-remains a little mysterious in the United States. There's a system inside the fence line where I work, controlling a Linde Hydrogen plant for a neighboring refinery. And there are Siemens systems all over the western hemisphere, some packaged with other Siemens offerings, some replacing aging APACS or Texas Instruments 500-series PLCs, and, of course, Siemens systems are abundant in the discrete manufacturing sector. But, for all Siemens' apparent ubiquity, I had to go to India to discover a pretty exciting new feature-support for Foundation freldbus (FF).