President’s Welcome – March 2022

A warm welcome to you all,
“Stop the war in Ukraine” must be the first message of my contribution. Conventional wisdom says that sports and business should not comment on politics and religion. But times have changed. For someone like me, who lives in freedom, enjoying the free press and everyone’s right to express their opinion and protest in public, it is easy to call out the crimes of war and the war criminals. Honestly, as a father of 3 children, I don’t know if I would have the same courage that more and more people show, protesting publicly, and facing the risk of being arrested immediately. We technicians and engineers are called to improve the ONE world we all live in with technical solutions for better water, better air, better ground and contributions to solving the world’s climate. Instead, we are all wasting money on weapons now, and there is a war among neighbors in Ukraine.

But we also have a lot of exciting news that I would like to share with you:

All Major Cloud Providers Support OPC UA over MQTT

Mission completed! For the first time in history all the major cloud/IT providers have committed to one solution for information exchange between OT & IT based on “OPC UA over MQTT”. In my last newsletter I announced we will continue the efforts of “all cloud providers such as aws, GoogleCloud, IBM, Microsoft Azure, Siemens MindSphere and SAP” that have committed to “OPC UA over MQTT”. I would like to thank all cloud vendors for their support of the international OPC press release which has been translated into 7 languages – see details here.

Hybrid Event ZVEI 5G-ACIA & OPC Foundation

Peter Lutz is explaining the progress of the OPC UA FX specifications including a first live demo in detail here. I would like to highlight a specific hybrid event co-organized by ZVEI’s 5G-ACIA and the OPC Foundation on the topic “OPC UA integration with 5G” which will occur on April 6^th, 2022 (registration is opening soon). My specific thanks to Alexander Ziegler, Siemens for his efforts leading the OPCF TSN/5G workgroup. I can’t wait to see the demo showing future industrial 5G infrastructure enabling reliable & real-time connectivity for mobile applications allowing OPC UA Safety.

Shows all Moved to Mid-2022

Due to COVID-19 all major trade shows in early 2022 have been postponed to Q2/3 this year and results in tightly timed and partially overlapping events. For example, I am saddened that we are unable to show the FLC demo at SPS Parma, Italia as it’s impossible for us to handle the logistics to our booth and get the demo equipment fully setup at Hannover trade show a few days later. Compared to commercial companies, we as non-profit organizations can’t scale and duplicate our booth equipment, unfortunately. So we will see the FLC demo for the first time live at Hannover Messe starting May 30^th – same as the new OPC UA to cloud demo. Right at the end of the show, Peter Lutz, Mike Clark, Alexander Allmendinger and myself will travel to the Automate show in Detroit, and some of us will participate at the ARC Forum Orlando in parallel.

Upcoming Events

See call for participation here https://opcfoundation.org/news-events/events/

Until then, the OPC Foundation will actively participate in various upcoming virtual activities:

April 25^th – 29^th: 2022 OPC Day International virtual
Register today: https://opcfoundation.org/opcday – with further details here
May 30^th – June 3^rd: 2022 Hannover Fair
See more information here: https://www.hannovermesse.de/en/
May 30^th, 2022: 2^nd World Interoperability Conference (2^nd WIC)
Co-organized by Hannover Messe / OPC Foundation / VDMA – see details and regisration here
June, 6^th – 9^th, 2022: Automate Show
Detroit, MI – see details and registration here
June, 6^th – 9^th, 2022: ARC Forum
Orlando, FL – see details and registration here
June, 21^st – 23^rd, 2022: Embedded World
Nuremberg, Germany – see details and registration here

Technical Specifications for Review

Just within the first few months multiple working groups made progress with specifications available for review:

Working groups within the OPC Foundation on OPC UA base specifications – find these Release Candidates for paid-members-only at this location:
https://opcfoundation.org/developer-tools/specifications-unified-architecture/specification-release-candidates-for-review/

ReviewBase Specification for Asset Management Basics (OPC 10000-110)
ReviewBase Specification for Relative Spatial Location (OPC 10000-210)

Joint working groups in cooperation with our valued partners have completed the Companion Specifications – find these Release Candidates for paid-members-only at this location:
https://opcfoundation.org/developer-tools/specifications-opc-ua-information-models/information-model-release-candidates-for-review/

Review Companion Specification for PROFINET RemoteIO (OPC 30142)
Review Part 2 of the Companion Specification for UA Cloud Library (OPC 30400-2)
ReviewCompanion Specifications for Mining (OPC 4056n – multiple documents)
Review V1.01 for Machine Tools, Part 1 – Monitoring and Job (OPC 40501-1)
Review V2.00 for Tobacco Machine Communication (OPC 30060)
Review Machinery Part 101 – Result Transfer (OPC 40001-1)
Review V1.01 for Weighing Technology (OPC 40200)
Review V2.00 for Plastics and Rubber Machinery – Extrusion (OPC 40084)

Enjoy reading this newsletter!