2026 North American Profinet Plugfest takes place in Minnesota
PI North America, in cooperation with the Profi Interface Center, held its fourth North American Profinet Plugfest, on April 15–16, hosted by Emerson. Thirty-six engineers from 13 companies brought seven controllers and 15 devices to the plugfest. Participating companies included Banner Engineering, Cisco, Dunkermotoren, Emerson, Grid Connect, Hilscher, InduSol, Phoenix Contact, Real Time Automation, Sick, Siemens and Valmet. The event took place over two days at Emerson’s facility in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
All Profinet products must be certified in PI test labs, but the plugfest provided the opportunity for engineers to test their Profinet devices and controllers in an environment that comes close to the real automation world. Some of the products were nearing completion, so the plugfest provided a chance to evaluate them before formal certification. Testing was carried out in small groups around individual controllers with the devices circulating among the various controllers prior to creating one large network. Since every participant aims to learn the limits of their tested devices, a confidential atmosphere was a basic condition.
“We’ve never had participation to this level at a Profinet Plugfest in North America,” said Michael Bowne, executive director at PI North America. “The devices were many and varied; there were drives, I/Os, virtual PLCs, switches, DCSs, process instruments, network analyzers and the official PI test lab setup for rapid troubleshooting.”
Torsten Paulsen, general manager of the Profi Interface Center, added, “As the North American Profinet test lab, we thoroughly enjoyed this plugfest. While we work with customers in the test lab daily, testing their product from start to finish, these events are different. Here we have a variety of products from different companies, at different stages of the development cycle all at the same time.”
Emerson has recently increased its portfolio and capabilities of products supporting the Profinet protocol, said Steve Armstrong, vice president enterprise technology, Emerson. “We were happy to host this event to help ensure the easy multi-vendor interoperability customers expect from compliant devices and hosts,” he noted.
PI North America’s mission is to help manufacturers achieve beneficial results using its technologies. As a non-profit, member-supported organization, PI North America supports the factory automation and process control industries and is one of 24 regional associations that make up the global PI community. Members include vendors of hardware, software and systems, as well as end users, scientific institutes, universities, distributors and system integrators.
