So believes Mark Portlock, the IMC’s new junior national vice-president. Portlock was appointed at the Institute’s AGM late last year. A systems consultant at Honeywell, he has had extensive experience in the UK, US and Australian process control markets.

"Clearly, individual IMC members have a vested interest in their specific products and services, and where they might otherwise be competitive, I think the Institute brings their interests together in a positive way. It has the ability to ‘abstract’ the goals of the individual players, and encourage them to work for the greater benefit of New Zealand industry. And, I believe, the collective strategy will ultimately advance their own interests."

A prime candidate for the IMC’s facilitation role, says Portlock, is Foundation Fieldbus and its introduction to New Zealand. "Relative to many other countries, we are actually quite well advanced in the use of fieldbus. But it is the ‘play’ between individual companies and their vested interests that has to some extent retarded the technology’s introduction." The IMC, he says, can play a major role in removing some of the ambiguity about the product and smooth its entry.
While Foundation Fieldbus is often touted as a potential solution in the manufacturing and process control industries’ quest for a standard communications protocol, Portlock believes this is unlikely. "There is increasing recognition that products like Foundation Fieldbus are better suited to specific process control situations, and that alternative products such as Interbus, Profibus, DeviceNet and SDS are better for some manufacturing environments. I don’t think we’ll ever see ‘plug and play’ compatibility between these products."

But these products, will, he predicts, eventually communicate freely through ‘gateways’. "The IMC can be pivotal in facilitating the ‘interaction’ of the two product sectors to achieve greater compatibility."