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Starting in 2025, users and manufacturers will be able to find the PROFINET product they are looking for even faster and easier thanks to ECLASS and the Product Finder for PROFINET. The prototype is now available for all interested parties to view and test.

Information on desired PROFINET products can already be found in the existing Product Finder today, where you can search for a product by the manufacturer’s article/order number or a PROFINET GSD file, for example. It is also possible to find out with just one click whether a certificate has been issued by the Certification Office of PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) following successful testing in a PI certification laboratory and which profiles or features (PROFIdrive, PROFIsafe, IRT, redundancy, etc.) are supported.

This database currently contains more than 4,000 products, and this number has been growing steadily for many years. As time went on, though, a challenge arose. Over the years, different names and designations were used for one and the same product class or even parameter names, as there was no standard for this.

This is why a standardized product designation and a simpler product class structure based on ECLASS were created for the new Product Finder. ECLASS is an open data standard for the classification of products and services based on standardized ISO-compliant features. With the open ECLASS standard, it is possible to exchange product master data digitally beyond all borders, industries, organizations, countries, and languages. All product classes and their parameters described in ECLASS can be found in a shared database of the Eclass e.V. organization which is updated each year. The current version is V14 Advanced.

Four years ago, the ECLASS working group began getting the new ECLASS-based Product Finder off the ground within PI. The first step was to define the necessary features in ECLASS. The structure of the new database was oriented toward IODDfinder, the successful IO-Link Product Finder. In addition, a great deal of attention was paid to the search function to ensure that searching works intuitively.

All manufacturers who follow the ECLASS V14 statutes for product descriptions and have already implemented a corresponding database internally can transfer the product information of their products to the new PI system with the push of a button. An editor program for manual entry is also in the works. 

The first test run took place in August of 2024, where an initial group of products was copied over to the new database. This test was completed successfully with no major problems. The main phase has been in progress since November of 2024, with seven automation companies importing around 80 PROFINET products. Based on this experience, every PI member gets the opportunity to add their products to the new Product Finder. This is enabling users to find all the important information on certifications, GSD files and other important details on the device in the new Product Finder step by step.