PROFIBUS® is the world's leading field bus. With more than 15 million devices installed globally, PROFIBUS has a greater installed-base than all other field buses combined. PROFIBUS was created as an open standard to eliminate point-to-point cabling and to significantly reduce design, installation, maintenance cost and complexity for factory automation, safety, drives, and motion control applications. The key PROFIBUS® technologies are now included in the IEC 61158 and IEC 61784 standards.

PROFIBUS International (PI), formed in 1989, now has more than 25 Regional PROFIBUS Associations with 1300 member companies including major PLC/DCS vendors such as Siemens, Hilscher, Invensys, GE Fanuc and Yaskawa. Over 400 engineers contribute to more than 40 working groups. Regional Accredited Competence Centers evaluate and approve commercial PROFIBUS solutions

PROFIBUS® is suitable for applications such as:

• Safety-relevant applications which don’t use a second layer or aren’t distributed over special buses
• Fail-safe devices, such as emergency stop push buttons, for safety-related automation tasks
• Coordinated motional sequence of multiple drives for applications including electrical gears, curve discs and angular synchronous processes
• Distributed automation by means of clocked processes and electronic shafts (class 6) which can be implemented using slave-to-slave communication and isochronous slaves