PI North America was founded as PROFIBUS Trade Organization in 1994 and was generally known as just PTO. Although an autonomous non-profit trade organization, PTO renamed itself to PI North America to more closely identify with the international umbrella organization for the Regional PI Associations.
PI North America is dedicated to showing industry the beneficial results of using fieldbuses in general and PROFIBUS and PROFINET in particular while assisting device manufacturers throughout North America in the development and marketing of PROFIBUS and PROFINET products.
Over 1400 companies organized in 25 Regional PROFIBUS Associations develop and supply fieldbus and Industrial Ethernet solutions for cost efficient and highly reliable automation.
PI North America is part of the global PI community that includes 25 Regional PI Associations (RPAs).
As big as the move from fieldbuses to Ethernet-based networks was, the move toward Time-Sensitive Networking will be equally significant because it places all protocols on the...
Time-Sensitive Networking's star has been on the rise with its promise to bring determinism via standard Ethernet to the plant floor. In contrast to the positive news surrounding...
Concepts like the Industrial Internet of Things, Big Data and IT/OT convergence are making headlines and the race is on for companies to leverage each to gain a sustainable competitive...
There still remains a lot of discussion about what ‘edge computing’ really means. At its core, it’s more about how control technologies are used than what they do.
As the data from factories scales exponentially, the ability to access that data transparently becomes critical. If we want the Industrial Internet of Things to truly be a game...
It’s been hard to miss all the activity going on recently around Time-Sensitive Networking and OPC UA. Here’s what it means for the near-term future of industrial networking.
Profibus & Profinet International works to make technologies like Time-Sensitive Networking easy for end users, but we also help automation companies build TSN-capable products...
Once again, a group of companies has banded together to create a vendor-independent standard and found a home in Profibus International to promote, harmonize, and certify their...
With Ethernet having become the preferred industrial network type, do fieldbus networks still play a role? The answer depends on the application, even though Ethernet is clearly...
Recent innovations in industrial Ethernet’s physical layer—Single Pair Ethernet and Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer—are being heralded as game-changers for their ability to extend...
PI North America, the non-profit member-supported trade association for promoting industrial networking technologies in North America, has signed a contract with the IO-Link Community...
As ever-more amounts of manufacturing data are being used at enterprise IT levels, the challenge of easily accessing, collecting, and processing that data is growing. To tackle...
PI North America, the non-profit member-supported organization for PROFIBUS, PROFINET, IO-Link, and omlox technologies in North America, is excited to introduce a comprehensive...
Integrating an existing industrial communication standard with an up-and-coming method often creates headaches. But several industry experts see an easy path to integrating IO...
Sometimes one minute is not enough to find out about PROFINET. For those occasions, try some more detailed videos from the PROFI Interface Center, featuring Hunter Harrington....
Gotta minute? You can learn a lot about PROFINET in a minute. Inspired by MinutePhysics, PI North America is pleased to present, drum roll please, MinutePROFINET
PROFINET supports virtually all automation functions in manufacturing, including discrete control, process control, motion control, peer-to-peer integration, vertical IT integration...
It’s an exciting time for the factory automation sensor and process control instrumentation markets as Ethernet evolves for wider use in manufacturing. With 2-wire industrial ...
What does digital transformation mean for industrial networks? How can a future-proof networking strategy help companies go digital? What are the trends in automation networks...
Understanding how the ‘black channel principle’ ensures safety-related messages get from their source to their destination and IO-Link’s role in simplifying the sensor-to-cloud...
Though standardization efforts for Time-Sensitive Networking continue at pace, it is still years before industry should expect to see a bumper crop of compatible products.
A variety of reasons have contributed to the slowing of industrial Ethernet’s growth rate over the past several months, but all signs continue to point toward it becoming the ...
During a panel discussion at PI North America’s general meeting, industry experts talked about how the Industrial Internet of Things is affecting the needed skillsets, tools and...
From the domain expertise required to filter the required data in the correct way to expanding automation and IT networking knowledge requirements, the Internet of Things is dramaticall...
