This year the HCF celebrates 15 years of providing global support for application of the HART Protocol. Since its inception, the primary focus for all Foundation activities has been to advance the application of HART technology, strengthen its position in the global market, and help users maximize the value of their smart instrumentation investments.

“The HART Protocol has served as the world’s leading process communication technology for smart instruments since 1990. The technology support, enhancements, and management that the Foundation provides have played a major role in establishing HART as today’s global standard,” says HCF Executive Director Ron Helson.

The Foundation, an international, not-for-profit, membership organization, is the technology owner and central authority on the HART Protocol. The HCF manages and controls the Protocol standards including new technology developments and enhancements that benefit and support the needs of the industry.

Technology Enhancements
Since its formation in 1993, the HCF has worked with its member companies and end users to develop major enhancements to the HART Protocol that address industry needs for enhanced device communication and to create additional product development tools. The first major enhancement to the Protocol, HART 6, released in 2001, included support for longer tags, additional Common Practice Commands and faster digital communications.

The latest version of the HART Protocol, HART 7, released in 2007, moves the technology into the world of wireless communication. HART 7 includes the new WirelessHART™ standard and addresses the critical needs of the process industry for a secure, reliable, and simple technology that provides a common sense and industrial strength network solution to wireless communication.

“The launch of WirelessHART technology not only opens up new application fields but also confirms the role of the HART Communication Foundation as a pacemaker in the process industry,” says Frank Hils, Endress+Hauser Corporate Director Projects and Solutions. “In all its different development stages, however, HART never sacrificed its roots of being an easy to apply and reliable technology.”

“The WirelessHART standard provides a robust wireless protocol for the full range of process measurement, control, and asset management applications,” says Ron Helson, HCF Executive Director. “Based on the proven and familiar HART protocol, it enables users to quickly and easily gain the benefits of wireless technology while maintaining compatibility with existing devices, tools and systems.”

“HART technology has proven itself to be resilient in bringing us from analog to wireless. This has resulted in significant savings for both suppliers and users by providing an evolutionary path that protects their investments in automation technology,” says Mark Schumacher, Emerson Process Measurement, President, Rosemount Pressure / CPS Business.

The HCF introduced the HART Server in 1999, an easy-to-use, OPC-compliant software application that provides an easy-to-use gateway for accessing real-time process and diagnostic information available in HART field instrumentation. In 2004, the Foundation released the HART DD-IDE (Device Description Integrated Development Environment) with Smart Device Configurator (SDC-625), an integrated set of tools that supports development, testing and maintenance of DDs for HART devices.

“The importance of DD technology in tomorrow’s process automation world is already established,” says Helson. “Our DDL programs provide a platform for future enhancements to DD technology as a whole and enable wider spread global access to DD technology.”

DDL has been a key element of HART technology since 1990. Today it remains the most important and widely used digital communication descriptive language, providing a stable platform for suppliers to define and document the capabilities of HART-enabled products in a single, open and consistent format.

Working in collaboration with other international fieldbus organizations and automation system and device suppliers, the HCF completed enhancements to the HART Device Description Language (which was approved by IEC as an International Standard in 2004). The enhanced DDL specification, released in 2005, makes standardized device configuration a reality allowing users to easily visualize and configure millions of installed HART-enabled intelligent devices.

“The standardization of device configuration is as significant to the process industry as the creation of Windows® was for PCs,” says Ed Ladd, HCF Director of Technology Programs. “The enhanced DDL benefits both users and developers by reducing the complexity and streamlining the process. One DD to work everywhere—that’s our goal.”

Foundation Programs
The primary focus for HCF activities is to advance the application of HART technology, strengthen its position in the global market, and help users maximize the value of their smart instrumentation investments. HCF educational programs include training workshops, international trade shows and conferences, the HART website, an online product catalog, e-learning, newsletters, publications, CDs, and speaking engagements.

To extend the reach of the HART message into the global marketplace, the HCF partners with major trade publications to produce HART magazine supplements in Europe and North America and participates in industry conferences, panel discussions and webcasts.

In 2002, the Foundation created the HART Plant of the Year Award Program, to recognize ingenuity in the application of HART technology. The award recognizes people, companies and plant sites that are using the full capabilities of HART Communication in real-time applications to improve operations, lower costs and increase plant availability.

Creation of Foundation
In September 1990 a group of industry professionals gathered in Bloomington, Minnesota, for the first official meeting of what was then called the HART Users Group. The meeting lasted two days and required only five pages of Recorded Minutes. But the moment was significant. That meeting marked the beginning of HART as an “open” communication technology.

Representatives from 26 companies sat in that first meeting. They talked about the HART technology—Application Layer, the Data Link Layer, the Physical Layer—and discussed the organization of a group that would manage the protocol standards and provide worldwide support for the technology.

The companies attending were: ABB Kent-Taylor, AppliedSystem Technologies, Eckardt, Endress+Hauser, Engineering Measurements, Exxon Chemicals, Fischer & Porter, Fisher Controls, Hartmann & Braun, Hitachi, Honeywell, ITT Barton, Kay-Ray/Sensall, Moore Products, M-System, MTL, NCR, NovaTech, Proctor & Gamble, Rosemount, Sherex Chemical, Siemens, SMAR, Southwest Research Institute, Valtek and Yokogawa.

At a second meeting in December of 1990, member companies passed bylaws and established four working groups: Definition, Conformance Testing, Man-Machine Interface and Interoperability. Three meetings were held in 1991 and by November, two more working groups had been added: Output and PID. The first HART Product Data Sheet was also presented.

In March 1993, the HART User Group voted to create the support group they had discussed in that first meeting: an independent, not-for-profit organization to manage and support the HART Protocol. In June, the HART Communication Foundation was established.

Today, the Foundation is supported by more than 200 of the world’s leading process automation suppliers around the world and has offices in Austin, Texas, USA, Basel, Switzerland, and Shanghai, China. In 2006, the HCF established a HART Users Group and is currently working in cooperation with other industry groups to find ways to integrate HART technology for the benefit of the entire industry.

“HART provides a solid base for the process industry in wired and wireless device communication,” says Hans-Georg Kumpfmüller, Siemens Division President for Sensors and Communication. “The fast-growing installed base of more than 25 million field devices is a clear sign that our commitment to HART technology is a sound investment.”David Eisner, Honeywell Vice-President and Chief Engineer, concurs. “HART has evolved from a basic field device configuration protocol to an integral part of distributed control systems and instrument asset management offerings. Honeywell continues to partner with our customers to harness the value from this enabling technology,” he says.

“For 15 years, our goals have remained the same—to provide a strong technical support structure for the application of HART technology, to educate users on the benefits the technology can provide in their plant environment, and to enhance the technology to serve the current and future needs of the industry,” Helson says.