Fieldbus Standardization, the European Approach and Experiences

Focusing on the purpose of standardization in general, reflecting on the historical developments of Fieldbus Standardization and taking into account the actual challenges given by progress of technologies, the assumption is justified that traditional standardization structures and procedures are not able to lead in time to market accepted results.The European Approach is an experiment with promising results because it takes due account of the real market needs: it has led to an accepted European Standard EN 50170 and the Common Application Interface between bus and peripheral equipment (NOAH Project) is under development.