Fieldbus Foundation

The Fieldbus Foundation is an organization dedicated to a single international, interoperable fieldbus standard. It was established in September 1994 by a merger of WorldFIP North America and the Interoperable Systems Project (ISP). The Fieldbus Foundation is a not-for-profit trade consortium that consists of more than 350 of the world's suppliers and end users of process control and manufacturing automation products. Working together these companies have made contributions to the IEC/ISA/FDI and other fieldbus standards development.

Unlike proprietary network protocols, FOUNDATION fieldbus is not owned by a company, it is an open, interoperable [fieldbus] that is based on the International Organization for Standardization's Open Systems Interconnection (OSI/ISO) seven-layer communications model. The FOUNDATION specification is compatible with the officially sanctioned SP50 standards project of the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society (ISA) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

From its inception Fieldbus Foundation has taken a leadership role in the development of fieldbus digital communications and integrated system architecture based on regional and international standards. The foundation's history is one of growth and achievement, as fieldbus-based control solutions have gained widespread acceptance in the global automation marketplace.

In the 1980s, considerable effort went into developing a digital communication standard for field devices. Credit is due those members of the ISA's SP50 committee who spent years defining technical requirements and building consensus for a digital fieldbus. In the interim, leading process control suppliers started work on their own proprietary digital communication standards. These multiple efforts resulted in a handful of competing protocols, none of which could work together.

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