The Fieldbus Foundation has announced it has signed a copyright agreement with Prolist International, allowing Prolist to publish Foundation fieldbus parameter names and definitions in its standardised process control device/system specifications and database.
Headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany, Prolist International is a not-for-profit organisation composed of corporate (automation manufacturers and end-users) and university members.
It is the successor organisation to the Project Group ‘Lists of Properties’ (Prolist), supported by Namur, the international process industries’ end-user group, and Zentralverband Elektrotechnik- und Elektronikindustrie e.V. (ZVEI), the German electrical and electronic manufacturers’ association.
Namur and ZVEI have collaborated to define and record properties and Lists of Properties (LOPs) for process control/automation devices and systems.
Prolist International seeks reduced engineering and transaction costs for procurement and sales in the area of process control technology. This includes integration of the workflows of all parties involved in plant lifecycle management.
The basis for this effort has been created in the form of machine-readable descriptions of the properties of process automation components that are relevant for engineering purposes.
The working results of Prolist are published as LOPs in the Namur Recommendation NE 100 ‘Use of Lists of Properties in Process Control Engineering Workflows,’ which provides a method for standardizing the descriptions of process control and instrumentation equipment. As such, it supports data exchange between systems in a customer-supplier relationship.