The idea behind standardization was not only to make the definitions vendor independent but also to secure customer trust in the new technology and, thus, secure the market position. It was this idea of open systems that finally paved the way for the breakthrough of the fieldbus concept. To further increase interoperability between different device vendors, so-called profiles (or companion standards, user layer, or interworking standards) were developed that defined minimal
data sets for specific application fields, as well as data syntax and semantics beyond the pure OSI model [1], [4].