Every year, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) honors experts with the 1906 Award for special achievements in international standardization projects. Prof. Dr. Frank Schiller, a safety specialist at Beckhoff, was one of 38 German prizewinners honored with the award in September.
Only five experts worldwide in each field are nominated each year. Prof. Dr. Frank Schiller received this year's award in the "Industrial process measurement, control, and automation" (TC 65) category. He was honored for his commitment as a functional safety expert over the past ten years, in particular to safety communication. As head of the German DKE/UK 914.1 committee, he plays a key role in working on the profiles for functionally safe communication systems. The award recognizes his developed new model for calculating the quality of safety communication, which includes many types of faults previously only considered special cases and can be applied by simple modification of previous calculation methods. Furthermore, it enables safety to be verified, even if security algorithms are used. Prof. Dr. Frank Schiller has thus made an important technical contribution to the IEC 61784-3 series on safe fieldbuses and their latest developments with extended models and equations. His contribution is critical to establishing the scientific basis for the current content of IEC 61784-3.
"I'm very proud to receive this year's IEC 1906 Award; it's a real honor. The award recognizes my work within the IEC and acknowledges my efforts in the field of safety communication. Only five experts in my field are nominated each year worldwide, and that makes this award all the more significant for me. I am grateful for this award and will continue to work passionately on the global development of international safety standards," Prof. Dr. Frank Schiller commented.