Industry Valley
Industry Valley
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PI North America, which supports PROFIBUS, PROFINET, IO-Link, and omlox technologies in North America, collaborated with the PROFI Interface Center to host the fourth North American PROFINET Plugfest event. Held on April 15-16, 2026, at Emerson's facility in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, this event generated significant buzz in the industry.
A total of 36 engineers from 13 different companies participated in the Plugfest with 7 controllers and 15 devices. Major companies such as Banner Engineering, Cisco, Dunkermotoren, Emerson, Grid Connect, Hilscher, InduSol, Phoenix Contact, Real Time Automation, SICK, Siemens, and Valmet had the opportunity to test their products in conditions close to a real automation environment. This allowed devices to undergo a detailed evaluation before official certification.
Initially, tests were conducted in small groups, centered around individual controllers. Devices were moved between different controllers to examine their compatibility. Subsequently, all devices were integrated into a single large network and subjected to comprehensive testing.
Michael Bowne, Executive Director of PI North America, expressed his satisfaction with the interest in the event: "We have never seen such high participation at a PROFINET Plugfest in North America before. There was a wide variety of devices; drives, I/Os, virtual PLCs, switches, DCSs, process instruments, network analyzers, and an official PI test lab setup for quick troubleshooting were all together." This record participation once again highlighted the importance of PROFINET technology in the industry.
