The OPC Foundation will support the development and promotion of an Advanced Physical Layer (APL) for industrial Ethernet, suitable for use in demanding applications and hazardous locations in the process industry.
The OPC Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Michael Clark as the Director of OPC Foundation North America. With over 30 years of experience, Michael Clark is internationally recognized in the process automation sector for his expertise in Industrial Control System (ICS) fieldbus protocols.
Three new updates are available on the collaborations front. First, the VDMA and VDW have joined forces to promote the use and dissemination of OPC UA standards under the umati label. Second, the EUROMAP Companion Spec for plastics and rubber machines based on OPC UA is released. Third, an OPC UA Companion Spec for PROFINET is released.
The new OPC UA Compliance Test Tool (UACTT) has been extended to include more than 1800 test scripts for OPC UA core functionality and for Companion Specifications –including validation for Process Automation Device Information Model (PA-DIM), PLCopen, and MDIS. Certification testing can now also be performed remotely via a virtual connection.
The OPC Foundation, ODVA, and Sercos International are pleased to announce a collaboration to develop a new generation of a best-in-class motion technology for industry: OPC UA Motion. A new Working Group is tasked with specifying the motion facet of Field Level Communications (FLC) to enable inter-vendor operation for motion automation.
Open standards are fundamental to how we break down barriers to innovation, flexibility, and efficiency. By standardizing interfaces and information, we can promote interoperability in factories throughout supply chains and across entire enterprises.
The TwinCAT OPC UA Server software from Beckhoff has been extended with the standardized GDS interfaces to support the Push Certificate Management model of the Global Discovery Server (GDS).
METTLER TOLEDO built the specifications for their simple static weighing and dynamic checkweighing scales ahead of time –to be ready when the Companion Specification is released in the near future.
This paper explores what OPC UA Certificates are and what they provide, how they are used in OPC UA, and how they fit into the security ‘stack’ of OPC UA. Additionally, it examines OPC UA encryption methodology and the key concepts of a layered security model.
Most people would immediately associate the OPC and OPC UA communication protocols with industrial automation. For the most part, that perception hasn’t entirely changed, but the evolution of related software solutions has provided a reason to consider OPC technology as part of a more comprehensive automation strategy.