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FLC Corner – September 2021

    More than 320 experts from over 60 OPC Foundation member companies have been contributing to the OPC UA FX (Field eXchange) specifications which extend the OPC UA framework down to the field-level. The first public specification for Controller-to-Controller is expected by end of 2021 with a demo being shown at SPS in November.

    Congratulations to the Ethernet-APL Project

      The OPC Foundation congratulates the Ethernet-APL Project on the announcement of their achievement of a critically important milestone of cross-vendor utilization of their standard. We have joined this initiative because we strongly believe that the combination of OPC UA over APL will be a key technology for decades to come.

      Leveraging OPC UA to Help Meet Site Security Requirements

        Due to the criticality of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and the desire to make process and business information available to anyone, anywhere, and at any time, the information that is exchanged must meet the security requirements of the site. The OPC UA standards are designed to meet these security requirements while maintaining the level of flexibility and control that site administrators expect.

        OPC UA Modelling Best Practices

          This whitepaper is intended to provide guidelines and best practices for developing OPC UA based information models. It is not a formal specification, but recommends ways to create OPC UA information models that eventually lead to a better product.

          OPC Foundation Joins APL Project Group

            The OPC Foundation will support the development and promotion of an Advanced Physical Layer (APL) for industrial Ethernet, suitable for use in demanding applications and hazardous locations in the process industry.

            Collaborations: umati // EUROMAP // PROFINET

              Three new updates are available on the collaborations front. First, the VDMA and VDW have joined forces to promote the use and dissemination of OPC UA standards under the umati label. Second, the EUROMAP Companion Spec for plastics and rubber machines based on OPC UA is released. Third, an OPC UA Companion Spec for PROFINET is released.

              FLC Corner – June 2020

                The OPC Foundation, ODVA, and Sercos International are pleased to announce a collaboration to develop a new generation of a best-in-class motion technology for industry: OPC UA Motion. A new Working Group is tasked with specifying the motion facet of Field Level Communications (FLC) to enable inter-vendor operation for motion automation.

                Exploring OPC UA Security Concepts

                  This paper explores what OPC UA Certificates are and what they provide, how they are used in OPC UA, and how they fit into the security ‘stack’ of OPC UA. Additionally, it examines OPC UA encryption methodology and the key concepts of a layered security model.

                  Specification for OPC UA Safety Release 1.00 Completed

                    The OPC UA Safety working group has achieved a key milestone publishing Release 1.00 of the specification for the interoperable communication standard for functional safety: OPC UA Safety “Part 15 OPC UA Core Specification”. OPC Foundation members are invited to participate in a co-funding project to develop a software stack.

                    Machine Vision Information-Model Based on OPC UA

                      The OPC Foundation’s vision for facilitating the creation of globally harmonized information models via OPC UA Companion Specifications reaches its first milestone and demonstrates the path forward to true semantic interoperability -as released by the VDMA Machine Vision Initiative.