Case Studies

Back when the concept of Industrie 4.0 was in its infancy, the Joint Water and Wasterwater Authority, Vogtland was already using OPC UA and PLCopen to model its pumping stations. That was 5 years ago. Today, two new videos describing the companion spec are released.

What do Krüger A/S, water/wastewater treatment plants, Java, and Amazon Web Services have in common? OPC UA of course! Read this Application Story to learn how a dockerized OPC UA server uniquely scales itself per customer demand.

Machine tool builder exeron is convinced that OPC UA is the way forward. The specialist in electrical discharge machining (EDM) has started down that path by developing a communication solution based on the open IEC standard. The solution eliminates the proprietary interface between the HMI systems and CNC controllers of the company’s EDM line.

Benninger Automation forms part of the Swiss Benninger Group which has been the textile industry‘s leading partner across the globe for more than one hundred and fifty years. While developing “certon,” Benninger Automation has focused closely on usability features. As one example, no programming knowledge is required to configure certon for the local data logging environment. The data logging itself is handled by the certonLOG module. This software is installed on a host PC and collects data from the connected sources via an OPC UA client. The mechanisms used in the OPC UA communication standard not only safeguard the actual exchange of data but also ensure that it is transferred securely.

LG CNS has been providing factory operation consulting and services for various industries including electric / electronic, semiconductor, automobile, medical, pharmaceutical, shipbuilding / heavy industry, construction / machinery, health, clothing, and logistics for the past 20 years. With OPC UA, LG CNS can develop products that are ultimately going to be deployed to extend across facility control and the MES domain via a standardized and consistent approach for smart factories. It will be used in the integrated engineering business by providing device modeling and meta information exchange function on the server side, as well as basic data collection, monitoring, analysis and control functions on the client side.

At its core, OPC UA combines a robust, secure communication protocol with a flexible information modeling framework. A challenge for the PLC vendor deploying OPC UA in embedded devices is how to represent different customers’ information modeling requirements in a common way.