The Steering Committee of the Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) Cooperation Team (ECT) announces that its technical team has achieved important milestones as it develops a common solution for field device integration (FDI). The FDI project team worked the past 18 months to identify use cases encompassing all facets of plant operations: from start up and commissioning; to ongoing maintenance activities and plant operations. This team’s efforts also included drafting an architecture concept that meets the needs of both EDDL and FDT technologies as they are migrated to a common standard.

The success of the FDI project is the result of close cooperation between the ECT and key global process control suppliers including ABB, Emerson, Endress+Hauser, Honeywell, Invensys, Rockwell Automation,  Siemens, Smar and Yokogawa. 

Along with the draft architecture, the technical team performed a complete inventory of use cases wrote a draft functional specification.  The solution is a client/server structure based on the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA).  The FDI solution contains two elements: a “Device Package” provided by the device supplier containing EDDL components and an optional programmed application for customized user interfaces based on the IEC Standards IEC 61804-3 EDDL, IEC 62453 FDT and IEC 62541 OPC UA.This design permits complete flexibility for users to develop customized user interfaces to meet individual needs.  

The next milestone of the project is the development of detailed specifications of the FDI solution. The specification will then be validated by each of the member organizations which will begin during the second quarter of 2009. 

Details of the exact FDI architecture and associated device interface will be unveiled with the release of the final functional specification, currently planned for the summer of 2010.