Wireless sensor networking technologies originally designed for smart cities or agriculture do not integrate well with plant automation systems. Instead, most plants use standard IEC62591 (WirelessHART) wireless sensor networks. WirelessHART enables automatic data conversion to OPC-UA, HART-IP, Modbus and other industrial protocols without custom coding/programming to a non-standard API or scripting to parse vendor-specific data formats. This way data is easily integrated, and no sensor data is left behind. WirelessHART enables centralized sensor management such as configuration of remote sensors, and a single common app can be used for diagnostics of all sensors from multiple vendors. Other wireless technologies cannot achieve the same result.
As a result of this new approach to automation and transforming work, plants can operate safer, greener, longer and faster (Table 2).
Table 2: Operational excellence thanks to the new automation