Research Triangle Park, N.C. March 5 - The ISA100.11a working group is planning an early April committee meeting in Chongqing, China. During the meeting, the ISA100.11a draft standard is scheduled to be issued for initial work group balloting, which is the first step in the consensus-based approval process for the standard. The draft ballot will be voted on by the work group via mail at a later time.
Ahe series of meetings held last month in Orlando included several workshops where leaders and editors presented technical material from the standard under development.
"The workshops allowed the leadership to share what we've been working on with a wider audience, and gave people a chance to ask questions and make suggestions about the standard. This is a major part of the consensus-building process for an open standard like ISA100.11a," said ISA100 co-chair Wayne Manges of Oak Ridge National Labs.
Several open items were discussed and resolved in various task groups, including the security task group, where several motions were put forward and passed. "In the security task force, we had about seven open items that needed to be discussed before consensus could be reached, and motions could be made and passed. That process is critical for theprogress of the standard," said ISA100.11a co-chair Pat Kinney of Kinney Consulting.
"When major competitors like Yokogawa, Honeywell and Emerson come together to get motions passed in sessions, the users win, and that's what we saw in Orlando," added Manges.
About 40 individuals representing more than 30 companies attended the work group meeting and workshops, with about 50 people attending an ISA100 overview session. The overview session provided information about the work of the committee, the ISA100.11a standard, the ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute, interoperability and user expectations.
"In addition to giving us a chance to share what we've done and get feedback on open items, the work we did in Orlando kept us on track to deliver a draft of the standard for ballot in April at our China meeting," said ISA100.11a co-chair Dan Sexton of GE Global Research.
The April meeting will be held April 1-4 at the Empark Grand Hotel in Chongqing, China.
