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.
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.
The first quarter of this year has been exciting -to say the least. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the first issue of OPC Connect in 2020. Please continue reading for updates on the many activities and results from the OPC Foundation. Thanks for your interest!
To exchange transactional-, conditional- and logistical-data with MES, ERP and Cloud Services in an affordable manner, standardization and fast to configure connectivity technology for new and legacy equipment is key. METTLER TOLEDO can easily connect legacy and new products for static weighing to modern data management systems.
“This new version 10.96 product release of ICONICS automation software suite represents great strides in engineering in multiple areas,” said Russ Agrusa, CEO of ICONICS. A new launch video has also been released highlighting the software’s potential.
Even early on, Microsoft knew how important it would be for manufacturers to connect and communicate across disparate systems. That’s why they’ve built support for the OPC UA standard into their full spectrum of IIoT solutions. This frees manufacturers to choose the equipment and tools that best fit their needs, knowing those solutions will integrate with their stack.
Welcome! Not only is Christmas is coming unexpectedly fast – also for me personally the first year as President that started in October 2018 has passed incredibly fast! So, let’s first look back a little on what happened and then look to the future. Enjoy this issue of OPC Connect!
Microsoft is 100% committed to OPC UA. In fact, Microsoft was the first cloud vendor to embrace OPC UA back in 2015, and has contributed more open-source code to the OPC Foundation than everyone else combined by a factor of 10. So why do we do it? Well, it fits perfectly into our openness strategy.
Reimagining the Control Loop: thanks to the standardization success of OPC UA, the bi-directional integration between Information Technology (IT – Business Context) and the Operational Technology (OT – Physical Components and their Control Functions) is nowadays much less complex and costly than in the past.
Since the OPC Data Logger from Software Toolbox natively supports OPC UA, it’s incredibly easy to connect directly to the embedded OPC UA Server in an S7-1500 and log process data efficiently and securely.
Welcome to OPC Connect September 2019! I hope that you have relaxed during the summer holidays and that you are fully prepared for the next challenges ahead. Before we look to the future, let me briefly summarize what has happened since our last issue in June. A lot is going on around the world and there have been great successes with various Companion Specifications. Read on to learn more!
With umati, the machine tool industry, for the first time, has a vendor-neutral communication interface specification. In addition, because OPC UA is its underlying technology, umati will be capable of being deployed in future end-to-end solutions spanning entire process chains in the manufacturing industry.
In early 2018, Part 14 of the OPC UA Standard, aka “Publish-Subscribe” or “PubSub” was released, helping to encourage further interaction between OPC UA and communications protocols such as MQTT.
No matter in which part of the world you are, as a representative of the OPC Foundation you are always welcomed, since the challenge of industrial interoperability exists worldwide and can only be solved together. Global cooperation and harmonization are key tasks for the OPC Foundation going forward -not just across borders but inside vertical industries as well.