“Shop Floor to Top floor: OPC UA –Platform Enabler for Industrie 4.0”
Across the globe, Industrie 4.0 is fast gaining momentum. This new and disruptive technology has taken every industry by storm; it is transforming and reshaping the way things are perceived in the manufacturing division as well. India is no exception to this global trend and innovatively paving its own way to smart manufacturing.
OPC Foundation, together with VDMA, organized its first symposia, “Shop Floor to Top floor: OPC UA –Platform Enabler for Industrie 4.0” in Pune and Bengaluru on October 22 and 23, respectively. Partners for the symposia included Microsoft, SAP, Beckhoff Automation, and Utthunga Technologies.
The key focus of the symposia was on OPC UA capabilities for shop floor to top floor integration and the critical role of OPC UA in enabling Industrie 4.0. Around 250 attendees comprising technology leaders, decision-makers from various automotive and manufacturing industry, academia, and research institutions participated at the events.
Key Highlights from Pune and Bangalore
In Pune, the keynote speaker of the event, Tulika Pandey, Scientist ‘F’ & Director, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India graced the occasion. She shared her vision on “India’s Stride into a Trillion Dollar Digital Economy” and the possibility of making OPC UA as the standard for India’s digital transformation journey.
The symposium in Bangalore was honored with the presence of keynote speaker Gaurav Gupta, Principal Secretary, Department of Commerce & Industry and Department of IT, BT and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka, who shared his vision on the “Role of Government in Digital Disruption and Readiness of Indian Industry”.
Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation President, highlighted the overview and potential of OPC UA in enabling Industrie 4.0 and touched upon the importance of OPC UA in India’s journey towards digital transformation.
Andreas Faath, Forum for Industrie 4.0, VDMA emphasised on “How VDMA Supports Interoperability and OPC UA Companion Specifications as the Key to Success”. Today 16 VDMA groups like Robotics, Machine Vision, and more are committed to provide standardized data and interfaces for the manufacturing industry.
Rajesh Nath, VDMA India, and Thomas Hahn, Vice President OPC Foundation, presented initial ideas to set up a local OPC India organization to support local requests for OPC UA technology information and projects.
Other notable speakers were Professor Amaresh Chakrabarti, Chairman, Centre for Product Design, IISc Bangalore. Speakers from IT companies SAP (Sathish Karthik Ramu and Deepak Rai Sharma) and Microsoft (Kumar Shiv Subramanyam) highlighted the easy integration of OPC UA enabled devices into their platforms.
Jitendra Kataria, Managing Director, Beckhoff Automation, India, explained the Service Oriented Architecture PLC “SoA-PLC” that provides services for horizontal and vertical integration.
Smitha Rao, Co-Founder, Utthunga Technologies, explained OPC UA technology in detail and clearly demonstrated the company’s knowhow supporting international companies with their OPC UA consulting and implementation services.
The first-ever OPC UA symposia in India turned out to be successful events in bringing together OPC global leaders, industry experts, academia and technology service providers under a common platform. The events put forth the interest and momentum of OPC technology in the Indian market.
Stefan Hoppe, President OPC Foundation said, “Attending the IoT conference in India 2016 and meeting Ms. Tulika Pandey was the first time I promised to start OPC Foundation activities in India. Together with VDMA and their excellent preparation by the local VDMA India team, this could be realized with two great events in Pune and Bangalore. It was a pleasure to represent the OPC Foundation and present the status of OPC UA activities. India, with their IT knowledge, has all the OPC UA knowhow locally to ramp up activities and adoption of OPC UA. This will enable participation in the growing world market of easy, secured, and interoperable connected devices. Because of the importance of India, the OPC Foundation will be back in 2019 with more similar events – let’s meet again!”