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FDI

Field Device Integration (FDI)

FDI is a new technology standardized in IEC 62769 that was developed jointly by manufacturers and foundations of process and automation technology for easy and uniform integration of field devices in various host systems. The goal of this development effort was to merge the two integration technologies that co-existed on the market – EDD and FDT – into a uniform, new-generation technology.

Device integration has been a challenge in the past: End users and device vendors have been facing the same annoying issue: Host systems from different vendors require different device drivers, e.g. DDs or DTMs; therefore, end users have additional effort to find the right driver for a specific tool, device vendors have additional effort to develop, test and maintain device drivers for various host systems, and – finally - the host vendors have increased effort for testing the host specific DDs or DTMs in their systems. As a consequence of this situation, end users very often did and do not inte-grate smart devices and thus do not benefit from the additional information the devices provide.
 

The answer is FDI: one device with one device package to be used from Engineering and Commissioning to Operation and Maintenance (Fig. 1).

FDI has been developed around leading industrial communication technologies. A number of manufacturer-relevant products and services support the FDI approach, including:
 

  • FDI IDE (Integrated Development and test Environment for FDI Packages),
  • FDI Common Host Components (for the development of interoperable FDI Hosts) and a
  • FDI registration service