March 3, 2009

Cooper Industries Ltd. has joined the Wireless Industrial Technology Konsortium (WiTECK) as a Promoter Member. It is the ninth member of the group and will hold seats on the WiTECK board.

WiTECK
is an open, non-profit membership organization “working to provide a
reliable, cost-effective, high-quality portfolio of core-enabling
system software for industrial wireless sensing applications under a
company- and platform-neutral umbrella”.



Cooper
expanded its product portfolio by introducing RF wireless technology in
2007. Omnex Control Systems—a business unit of the Cooper Bussmann
division—has been involved in industrial wireless products for more
than 20 years. Omnex involvement in WiTECK will help ensure that
WiTECK’s products possess the same high reliability when applied in the
field.



“We
welcome the contributions of Cooper Industries to the organization as
we work to address the growing need for complex wireless sensor network
software,” said WiTECK president and chair, Michael Dow of Freescale
Semiconductor.



WiTECK’s
goal is to develop software that implements existing specifications. As
wireless communication standards increase in complexity, the cost of
creating core software for what is essentially standard technology
rises. Once completed, this software represents a maintenance burden to
the developer and can easily become obsolete if not enhanced regularly.
WiTECK was formed to share this cost and risk across a number of
suppliers, yielding faster time to market and increased product
interoperability. WiTECK projects will serve the wireless automation
marketplace in both process and factory automation and control.
Anticipated projects are all embedded in nature: resulting software
will be used as a component of products to be marketed by WiTECK’s
member companies.



WiTECK’s first development project is a stack based on WirelessHART.



CLICK HERE to visit WiTECK.



CLICK HERE to visit Cooper Industries.