SPONSORED BY: METTLER TOLEDO
METTLER TOLEDO is a very active member in the Working Group that designed the OPC UA Companion Specification for Weighing. This allowed METTLER TOLEDO to offer solutions that comply with OPC UA standards for simple weighing and check-weighing as of the day they were published in June 2020.
Since then, METTLER TOLEDO experts have been engaged in a more intensive dialog about OPC UA with customers than ever before. This document shares the insights and experience gained during these conversations, regarding Companion Specifications.
Read on for a Preview of the Whitepaper
Chapter 1: What is an OPC UA Companion Specification?
OPC UA is a future-oriented machine-to-machine protocol for industrial automation developed by the non-profit OPC Foundation. The communication technology facilitates secure, reliable and vendor-neutral transport of raw data and preprocessed information from machine to machine and from the manufacturing level into the production planning or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
The OPC UA communication standard allows definition of Companion Specifications. These Companion Specifications describe how particular technologies can be addressed to make their integration and interoperability even easier.
The OPC UA Companion Specification for Weighing was designed by a Joint Workin Group consisting of 11 leading weighing technology manufacturers which met regularly over a period of two years ending in June 2020. Over this period, the group maintained an open-book policy in accordance with OPC Foundation requirements, and any weighing technology manufacturer was free to join. This allowed interested organizations to participate or simply follow development of the Companion Specification for Weighing.
After the release of the first version, the Joint Working Group decided to continue its cooperation to define online testing tools that would verify if OPC UA Servers for Weighing comply with the Companion Specification for Weighing.
Chapter 2: The Specification for Simple Weighing
Weighing is an action that uses measuring technology for a large variety of very different applications. Therefore, the Companion Specification for Weighing is subdivided into 14 different groups to describe weighing applications in industrial automation. One of those subdivisions is dedicated to simple weighing.
This document explains a few important aspects of the Specification for Simple Weighing and discusses how the simple weighing standard includes all data nodes included in each weighing device.
Download the whitepaper today to read the rest of the content, including the following chapters:
- What is an OPC UA Companion Specification?
- The Specification for Simple Weighing
- What is the Current Weight Node?
- What is the Registered Weight Node?
- Tips to Remember About Method Functionality
- “State Machine” for Weighing and Packaging
- Legal-for-Trade Weighing
- Overlaps with Other Specifications
- When Selecting a Client
- Outlook