When I was in college studying for my Chemical Engineering degree, it was pretty clear that engineering decisions were to be made on facts derived from first principals, experimentation, and observation; not on myths and innuendo. Yet the advancement of automation technologies today within industry applications seems to be more and more limited by beliefs than ever before. One particular technology plagued by this phenomenon is FOUNDATION Fieldbus. 
In a attempt to help overcome this hurdle, Larry O’Brien, Global Marketing Manager for the Fieldbus Foundation has provided a fairly comprehensive list of myth busters as part of online article at ControlGlobal.com entitled “Busting Myths about FOUNDATION Fieldbus; Mythperceptions about fieldbus can be changed.”
Larry touches on misconceptions that include:
- Implementation is too difficult
- There is no cost benefit to FOUNDATION Fieldbus
- I don’t’ need to invest in FOUNDATION Fieldbus when there is wireless technology
- There are not enough system integrators with good project implementation experience
- Control in the field poses risks and compromises system availability.
- And many more …
I will be the first to admit that FOUNDATION Fieldbus (FF) is not appropriate for every control application, but it does have the ability to create value within many of your automation solutions ranging from benefits of control in the field to being able to deliver alarms directly from devices rather than separately configured and managed through a controller CPU. And like most fieldbuses today, FF is widely extendable through your facility when implemented with the High Speed Ethernet (HSE) architecture option.
If you or your organization has struggled with realizing the benefits of FOUNDATION Fieldbus, take a read of Larry’s myth buster article and get past the misconceptions and start to benefit from a key automation technology.