The Regional Profibus Association (RPA) of southern Africa recently lent its support to IDXOnline in the formation of the continent's first and only Profibus Competence Centre (PCC).
Profibus, internationally, is considered one of the world's leading industrial Fieldbus standards. It is designed and maintained by Profibus International, a non-profit organisation made up of volunteers chosen from its approximately 1200 relating member-companies.
The Profibus standard grew out of the need for a universal means of interconnecting industrial devices (which may be built by many different vendors) to form large networks that can be centrally controlled and monitored. When compared with its predecessor technologies a Profibus system improves the reliability and speed of communication while reducing the physical wiring required in a plant-wide control system and at the same time provides more flexibility and extensibility. Being an international standard, with stringent certification procedures for compliance, means that there are also none of the all-too-typical integration problems found in vendor specific bus systems. The bus is currently employed in more than half a million sites world-wide connecting a total of close to 10 million devices.
Profibus International delegates its responsibility for support and marketing of Profibus around the world to various RPAs (regional Profibus associations) that operate in specific countries and regions. RPAs in turn support the formation of PCCs (Profibus Competence Centres) as centres of excellence in technical Profibus expertise. These centres offer services to the Profibus community in the form of technical support and training.
It has been of general concern in South Africa, that lack of technical training and limited use of appropriate diagnostic tools has hampered the installation and proper maintenance of Profibus networks in many of our manufacturing facilities. The RPA of Southern Africa believes that the formation of a centre with the mandate to improve local skills and pool knowledge will go a long way to address these problems.
The PCC will also be a valuable third party in bridging the inherent vendor-vendor mistrust that arises in many of these multivendor Profibus installations. The emphasis will be on cooperation to identify problems with the prime objective of speedy resolution.
Services to be offered by the Profibus Competence Centre will include:
* Certified technical training.
* e-mail, telephonic and Web support.
* System audits and troubleshooting services.
* Creation of a common database of service suppliers, users and problems.
On the global scale, 30 such centres are currently active around the globe, providing vital support and technical training for adoption of this important industrial Fieldbus standard. Of those in existence: 26 are in Europe and the British Isles, one in the USA and three in the Far East. Even more interesting is the fact that only about half a dozen currently offer their services in English.
It would not be surprising to see the South African PCC attract international interest, as exchange rates make it a significantly cheaper option as a training destination especially for growing local skills in other developing nations. Training courses commence in March 2004.
For more information contact Michael Bean, training manager, Profibus Competence Centre at IDXOnline, 011 465 7916, pcc@idxonline.com, www.profibus.com/rpa/98/</a>
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