ISA100.11a Generic Client Interface Interoperability Test

The ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute (WCI) www.isa100wci.org announced the November 13, 2012 completion of the interoperability trial to verify its Generic Client Interface (GCI) specification. The GCI is an important component of the ISA100.11a architecture as it defines many of the requirements for ANSI/ISA-100.11a based gateways.

Gateways from Yokogawa, Honeywell and Nivis successfully demonstrated interoperability with a WCI test client. The first production client to use GCI will be GE’s System 1 http://www.ge-mcs.com/en/bently-nevada-software/system-1/system-1.html Condition Monitoring and Diagnostics Software Platform for real-time optimization of equipment and selected processes, condition monitoring, and event diagnostics.
What is not clear from the available documentation is how independent all four products used in the test were in their development. The Fieldbus Foundation requires that depending on the test that the even the chipsets used for the test must be independent. Though unlikely to be the case for this interoperability test, but if for a hypothetical example the Honeywell and Nivis product were both based on and essentially developed by Nivis then in actuality the test would only have been for 2 independent suppliers.

The ISA-100.11a-2011 received committee approval in 2011 with formal ANSI approval in January 2012 and was accepted as new work in IEC SC65C and as a Publicly Available Specification (PAS) IEC 62734 in 2011 where it is presently out for ballot pending approval in Q1, 2013.

Ian Verhappen is a contributor and blogger for Control and Control Design. He has 25+ years experience in instrumentation, controls and automation. You can email him at [email protected] or check out his Google+ profile.