Profibus – Migrating a multi-national company to Profibus - A customers view

Presenter: Alan Southward; Project Engineer, Astrazeneca.

Large companies, especially within the pharmaceutical industry, are naturally conservative and reluctant to embrace change for change sake. Unless there are clearly identifiable benefits in cost and project timescales, new technologies, such as fieldbus, are perceived as having inherent risk and requiring significant cultural change. Safety, environmental issues and product quality are other factors considered.

This paper follows the experiences of Astrazeneca in going through such an exercise in cost/time evaluation, safety analysis and construction, including installation in hazardous areas.