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December 2014

Green paper producer gets even greener through data-driven initiative powered by Kepware

    by Kepware Technologies

    Having recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, Cascades was involved with recycling well before recycling was in style. Cascades Tissue Group, a division of Cascades, employs over 2,200 people within 17 manufacturing and converting facilities throughout the United States and Canada. Cascades owns and operates 17 paper machines, nearly 90 converting lines and eight integrated de-inking units. Using Kepware’s KEPServerEX, Cascades now supports communications across all of its 17 plants, 17 paper machines, and nearly 90 converting lines with just one piece of software. Engineered to support the OPC standard and over 150 different protocols, KEPServerEX allows Cascades to communicate with virtually any machine on its plant floor and access data without restrictions…

    OPC-UA enabled smart devices drive intelligent water management

      by Silvio Merz

      Decentralized, independently acting embedded controllers can form an intelligent network for the control of potable water and wastewater plants. OPC-UA is a powerful technology to establish secure and standardized M2M interaction at these plants…

      Compliance Corner

        by Nathan Pocock, Director of Compliance

        2014 was another successful year for OPC Certification, and 2015 looks to be even busier. Lab availability for testing vendor products in the first quarter 2015 is filling up fast.

        How OPC Server and SISORT®DA system control 29 substations without SCADA

          by Philippe Maurin, Gustavo Ferraz, Eduardo Freitas, RD&I, ORTENG Equipamentos e Sistemas.

          ORTENG is supplying the electrical and automation systems of 29 substations with 1,431 IEDs for oil refinery Abreu e Lima of Petrobras, which is being built at Ipojuca, Brazil. Each substation has at least one SISORT DA system working in a redundant configuration with a total of 44 systems and a total of 80,000 OPC items. Each system has an OPC Server (SISORT-OPC Server) connected to at least two (and up to six) OPC Clients, including DCS OPC Clients and Event Recorder OPC Clients.

          Seamless data exchange

            by Georg Suess, Operational Marketing, and Vaclav Bouse, Product Manager, Softing Industrial Automation GmbH

            With the industry-wide trend towards horizontal and vertical integration, intelligence is moving from supervisory control systems to local components. This development is leading to a growing need for communication for which the open OPC UA standard provides an ideal solution because it can also be used for embedded devices.

            OPC-UA makes subsea control more secure

              by Darek Kominek, Matrikon

              A new interface standard for subsea control systems, called MDIS, based on OPC-UA, is being developed to make communications between subsea and top side control systems more robust and less expensive to implement in terms of the time and effort needed to setup and maintain them…

              Packaging machine automation – It just works

                by Robert Trask, P.E

                As U.S. manufacturing and production moves toward what is generally considered the fourth Industrial Revolution, popularized as “Industry 4.0,” many of the necessary technological components are already in place. However, there is some additional ground that must be covered. A consensus is forming around the notion that the primary component preventing the revolution from reaching full speed is wider acceptance of communication standards. So how can we consistently, and with less effort, exchange data between the various components of a highly connected industrial machine or process?

                Unified architecture aids interoperability with IoT

                  by Nathan Pocock, Director of Technology and Compliance, OPC Foundation

                  It seems as though everyone has now heard of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 and the opportunities ahead. But are you prepared to benefit from this next technological leap while maximizing your opportunity with minimal risk and cost? One key to success is adopting open standards such as OPC UA, a platform-independent technology that assures interoperability…

                  OPC finds a role in bringing together process and building automation

                    by Dan Hebert, Control magazine

                    OPC is playing a significant role in allowing plants to bridge the gap between process control and building automation systems, according to an article in the November issue of Control magazine by senior technical editor Dan Hebert. There are multiple reasons to bring them together, and others to keep them apart.