At the SP100 Closing Plenary, SP100 co-chair Wayne Manges announced the compromise to include the WirelessHART specification into ISA10.11a as "inclusion by accommodation in Release 1," using a dual network, single gateway model, and considering interchangeability in Release 2.
"Unless," he clarified, "there are technical reasons why interchangeability is not possible. We don't want to promise what we can't be certain of delivering, and I'm not yet comfortable with 'interchangeability.' What happens if we say we can, and then we can't?"
Co-chair Patrick Schweitzer agreed. "Saying that we will consider interchangeability doesn't mean we aren't committed to full integration of WirelessHART into ISA100.11a...what it means is that we haven't figured out how to do it yet at the bits and bytes level."
Manges went on, "We need to encourage all the technical staffs of all the membership of this committee to get together and work hard to make this a reality."
Honeywell's David Kaufmann said it very clearly, "We have it all in words, and we have it down on paper. What we have to do now is to make it actually work."
Manges also said that he's been assured by HART's Ron Helson that the HART Communication Foundation is dedicated to this compromise and finding a technical solution that will present the end users with what they want-- a single standard for industrial wireless.
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