LONWORKS in industrial

In November 2000, an Industry Task Group of the German LON Nutzer Organisation was established. Prior to this event the market situation of LonWorks in Industry was too fixated on the competition with the traditional PLC/IPC/Fieldbus solutions. In the land of industrial automation, ruled by Profibus, Interbus and CAN, as well as their powerful organisations, LONWORKS hardly seemed to stand a chance of penetrating into this domain. Industry seemed not only disinterested in universal interoperability - one of the greatest strengths of LONWORKS - but also showed a pronounced scepticism due to its many negative experiences with fieldbuses in this regard. Additionally, there were neither Echelon´s LNS/sup TM/ as a network operating system, nor open tools like Echelon´s LonMaker for Windows available with which such networks could have been installed and maintained within a large industrial complex.