Hanover, April 24th, 2006: PROFIBUS International (PI) specifies a PROFIBUS/PROFINET profile for vacuum and hydraulic pumps in coordination with the VDMA (Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau - German Engineering Federation) and the NAMUR (User Association for Automation in Process Industries). An implementation of the device profile on the PROFIBUS and PROFINET communication systems is planned for the spring of 2007.

Whether hydraulic pumps in the chemical industry or vacuum pumps in the semiconductor industry: the pump is a key component in process automation. The commissioning and maintenance of pumps is often associated with excessive time demands and costs. Pumps can provide valuable data, from which information for operational process control, energy management and asset management of systems can be extracted. For these reasons, members within the VDMA Associations Pumps + Systems, as well as Compressors, Compressed-air and Vacuum Technology began developing a general device profile in the spring of 2005. The results form the basis for specifying a profile for PROFIBUS and PROFINET for vacuum and hydraulic pumps within a PI working group. The work has been carried out in close coordination with the VDMA and NAMUR.

The standardization work should lead to specifications for pumps that span type and application on the one hand and on the other, specify profile extensions for mapping the functionality of pump types in various industrial application areas. By doing so, the interoperability and interchangeability of pumps from different manufacturers is ensured. This allows multi-vendor systems expressly asked for by the users also in the area of pumps.