Sponsored by: Beeond / Matrikon
Examples of the benefits of IIoT era open data sharing throughout the plant or factory shop-floor and the rest of the enterprise are easy to come by. Common examples like better situational awareness, greater system autonomy, improved up-time driven by more effective maintenance abound. What is not as obvious is how important (and difficult) it is to preserve and utilize the context of the shared data so systems can interpret and use the data they receive from 3rd party sources.
At the heart of this context sharing challenge is the question of how to universally express the data structures, relationships, and functions in one data source so that other systems can discover, navigate, and make use of them. OPC UA addresses this problem with OPC UA Information Modeling.
As a part of its ongoing “Everyman’s Guide to OPC UA” series, Matrikon together with Beeond published an eBook and recorded a webcast on the topic to help introduce: the concept of what an OPC UA Information Model is, how it is used to represent physical systems in cyberspace which, taken together form Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) the building blocks of I4.0 and IIoT systems, and shows how vendors can enable OPC UA in their products.
Reflecting the growing interest in OPC UA, the IIoT/I4.0 movement, and for products that better support them, the webcast drew over five hundred registrants from around the world. Most (60%) of the attendees were software developers from control automation companies and system integrators with end-users making up the other remaining attendees.
Thomas J. Burke, the president of the OPC Foundation commented that “the OPC UA standard provides a solid foundation for interoperability in the IIoT and I4.0 era but it is essential for end-users and vendors to become familiar with these capabilities, how they translate to IIoT solutions, and how easily they can be implemented. These types of OPC Foundation member educational activities and content help socialize this knowledge .”
For those interested, the recorded OPC UA Information Modeling webcast can be seen here and the eBook can be found here.
Other webcasts in the Matrikon Everyman’s’ Guide to OPC UA series that were produced with Beeond cover topics like “OPC UA vs. Classic OPC” and “OPC UA Security”. Additional webcasts on select OPC UA topics and the accompanying eBooks will be coming out later this fall.
The webinars and eBook provide a foundation of learning to help companies get jump-started on the most important game changing information integration interoperability technology for exchanging information from the embedded world to the cloud.