Honeywell more wireless ‘agnostic’

Istanbul – End users are now less concerned about wireless standards than in what the technology can deliver at their process facilities, according to senior executives of Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS).

The US-headquartered company is the long-time champion of the ISA100.11a standard, which is also backed by Yokogawa and Invensys, while several of its major competitors, including Emerson, ABB and Siemens, support the rival WirelessHART standard.

The division into two camps, and the lack of a common standard, have hampered the uptake of wireless in the process sector over recent years.

“Yes, there are two predominant standards out there but I don’t necessarily see that as an enormous barrier compared to having one common standard,” HPS president Darius Adamczyk said in an interview at the recent EMEA Honeywell Users Group meeting in Istanbul.

While HPS remains firmly in the ISA100 camp, Adamczyk said “that doesn’t mean we don’t think WirelessHART has a future. We tend to be a bit more agnostic: to bring forward a compelling portfolio, I think we can address these protocols and have some flexibility on that.”

Likewise, Ignace Verhamme, EMEA solution consultants manager for HPS, said ‘interoperability’ was now the main issue for end users, adding that while Honeywell remains fully committed to ISA100 for its wireless protocol and transmitters it also wants to support all other protocols.

Third party devices are available that convert WirelessHART into HPS’ Experion process control system: converting the data via Modbus TCP, which its ISA100-based wireless infrastructure employs.

“From a technology point of view that is not a change,” said Verhamme. “That has always been possible, through gateways for example. It has also become a bit easier to [integrate] with Experion through hardware that is now available on the market.

“If a customer has WirelessHART transmitters, ISA100 transmitters Foundation Fieldbus transmitters, Profibus devices, and wants to know if we can bring that all together in Experion, my message to that customer is ‘yes, we can’.”