“Today there are up to 12 different machine languages in use worldwide, which doesn’t exactly make global networking of plants easy,” says Michael Schweiger, Volkswagen Account & Demand Manager. He is in charge of OPC UA, together with around 30 people working on the topic across all brands in the Volkswagen Group.
For over 100 years, a large global chemicals manufacturer has been leading innovation with gases, technology, and related services used by many industries worldwide. The company’s engineering team began to explore how they could migrate from their traditional method of control to a system of ‘state-based’ control, using OPC UA.
The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa) conduct interdisciplinary energy research in the building and mobility sectors. Empa relies on OPC UA to interconnect its research infrastructure – specifically, three large-scale projects named “NEST,” “ehub” and “move,” plus all the components involved in producing, storing, transporting and converting energy.
Every year, Tefal SAS manufactures around 44 million products in what was a high energy-consuming process. They sought an energy management system that could be implemented without revising their existing architecture. Tefal ultimately decided upon ICONICS software and OPC communications, which now handle energy data from multiple meters, transformers, and PLCs.
Meeting demanding challenges at scale for machine-to-enterprise communication is a challenge faced in many industries. To solve their challenges, a Fortune 500 industrial gas and chemical delivery equipment manufacturer successfully deployed a fully compliant OPC UA based system for communication with its huge base of legacy, mission-critical systems
Aker BP will begin using state-of-the-art real time solutions based on standardized and open technology (OPC UA) for industrial communication in the coming year. The system will be installed on multiple on- and offshore installations and represents a significant step towards autonomous drilling operations.
Read this Case Study to learn how OPC UA enabled RFID readers use secure elements for protected communication. Balluff and Wibu-Systems teamed up as part of the German IUNO (IT Security in the Industrie 4.0) project to further secure Auto-ID (and OPC UA) enabled devices with help from Unified Automation.
The largest independent manufacturer of electric mirror adjusting actuators and electric power-folding mirror actuators had a problem: their PCs would crash when due to a buggy Excel plugin that monitored productivity metrics. The solution was to implement Cogent’s DataHub which speaks both OPC UA and Excel.
For over 40 years, a large fire equipment manufacturer has produced high quality water delivery solutions for clients worldwide. Their robotic picking line had become problematic with frequent breakdowns and slow response time to commands, negatively impacting production efficiency. That is, until OPC UA came along.
Namibia Breweries Ltd. (NBL) has a long history of success in a tough environment at their Windhoek, Namibia location. Keep reading to find out how they use off-the-shelf OPC UA solutions and their team’s intellectual know-how and creativity to empower their manufacturing success.