First footing for Fieldbus at last

In what is claimed as the world's first commercial application of products conforming to the Fieldbus Foundation's final specification, Dow Chemical's Ft Saskatchewan plant in Canada is using the Foundation fieldbus-based architecture on a furnace application.

`We keep a close watch for new technologies that can boost our bottom line,' said Dow's Pat Skweres, leader of the company's corporate instrument/control system interface team. `When we saw that Foundation fieldbus had reached the point where commercial application made sense, we knew it was time to give it a try. Based on what we've seen so far, we're looking at using the same solution on five more furnaces.'

At Dow, fieldbus technology not only lowered wiring costs but also dramatically reduced time and effort needed for installation, commissioning and system start-up. Another team member, Grant Omichinski, said `instead of spending weeks stringing wires to every device, ringing out every connection, configuring each device in the field and tracking down problems, we just plugged everything together... and it all worked as it was supposed to.'

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