Take your chance.
Integration solutions
The future belongs to the integration of (safety) systems on the basis of cross-manufacturer, open communication standards. Great advances made in recent years have led to much simpler and more comprehensive integration solutions. Wide-ranging support from end-users and manufacturers for initiatives such as FF, HART, OPC, Ethernet and so on are the best proof of this.
Only cross-manufacturer integration of automation components enables customer demands to be met such as the following:
- Maximum interoperability between all systems, from field to MES level
- Long-term investment protection
- Creation of comprehensive asset management solutions
- Transparent, plant-wide data access
- Free choice of components and suppliers oriented around the application - including when revamping, extending and replacing
- Full ability to negotiate prices
- Protects against being technically and economically dependent on particular manufacturers
- Multiple proprietary buses reduced to a few standards
- Build up open, flexible, future-proof, easy-to-maintain networks
- Full access to all the functions and innovations produced by any manufacturer
- Future-safe: standards are continually adapted to rising market demands
With safety systems in particular, customers can choose the system which best suits their application, technical and economically - for example in terms of:
- Quantity and type of I/Os
- Availability and redundancy requirements
- Response time
- Ex-capabilities
- Options for building up safety-related, networked applications
- Flexibility for modifications and extensions - also during operation
- The flexibility required to be used in other parts of a plant - optimally adapted - and integrated into the existing safety network
- The flexibility to be integrated together with other, non-safe systems
Free choice also protects against safety systems with severe limitations in the Safety Manual, which lead in turn to high levels of planning and maintenance or, for instance, to frequent proof test intervals.
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