The purpose of standards #ISA100 #WirelessHART #standards #ISA #HART

I was having an offline discussion with a friend, and he said something that I think many of the ISA100 folks have forgotten:

If a standard has no mechanism for interoperability, then it will fail, because that is the ultimate purpose of a standard; to provide transparent interoperability.

That's why HART is so insistent on interoperability and interchangeability. That's why Profibus Nutzerorganization is insistent on interoperability and interchangeability. That why Fieldbus Foundation has finally started interoperability testing.

ISA100, on the other hand, chose to make interoperability optional, as a matter of device profiles. So two soi-disant ISA100 temperature transmitters, operating on different device profiles aren't necessarily interoperable...as Shell found when they tried the experiment.

The market is showing how end users think. Asset owners are voting with their feet in droves to WirelessHART.

A very small number of vendors and end users are still trying to make ISA100 work. The rest of us are off finding new and innovative uses for WirelessHART transmitters.