International focus on functional safety standards such as IEC 61508 and IEC61511 and the need for reduced installation costs is an indication that field bus technology should be considered in the next generation of safety systems.
A scalable controller architecture, including field bus technology and intelligent instruments, will be a way to combine high integrity protection functions and plant safety management with the potential for reduction in installation costs
Foundation Fieldbus for Safety Systems (FF-SIS) is an enabler technology on its early development stages. Although the protocol received TUV approval in 2004. The initial prototypes will be demonstrated in May 2008.
It is expected that the benefits realized in utilizing fields bus for control, might also be achieved in buses for safety.
The process industries are motivated by the additional functionality for diagnostics, asset management, proactive maintenance, calibration and configuration management. Also enabling partial valve stroking and operational statistics
Potentially this technology will enable a de-centralized architecture so faults require a smaller portion of the system and process to be shut down and potentially improving process availability.