The intelligent utilization of data and information from field devices can unleash a vast optimization potential hidden in plants. OPC UA provides a standardized communication including semantics, which could be used to simplify the set-up, scalability, aggregation, and usage of vertical communication paths.
Stefan Hoppe has been elected President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation after Thomas J. Burke nominated Mr. Hoppe as his successor. The OPC Foundation congratulates Mr. Hoppe on his new role as President and Executive Director and Mr. Burke on his transition to Marketing Strategy Officer and looks forward to the start of a new area under their leadership and counsel.
The OPC Foundation has launched an initiative to further enable OPC UA adoption throughout industrial automation by extending standardization and harmonization activities for OPC UA on TSN-enabled Ethernet networks at the device level.
The new Board members include Dr. Bernhard Eschermann, CTO of ABB Industrial Automation Division, Dr. Juergen Weinhofer, Vice President of Common Architecture and Technology for Rockwell Automation, and Fabrice Jadot, Senior Vice President, Technology & Innovation and CTO, Industry Business, at Schneider Electric.
OPC Foundation, together with VDMA, organized its first symposia, “Shop Floor to Top floor: OPC UA –Platform Enabler for Industrie 4.0” in Pune and Bengaluru on October 22 and 23, respectively. Partners for the symposia included Microsoft, SAP, Beckhoff Automation, and Utthunga Technologies.
The OPC Foundation has put together an exciting marketing calendar for 2019. We are offering members the opportunity to become sponsors of certain programs and events. As you are well aware, these events give you and your company a platform to showcase your products and to evangelize the OPC UA technology.
The OPC Foundation welcomes Volkswagen, the German car manufacturing major as an OPC Foundation member. The OPC Foundation is also pleased to announce record membership growth with Volkswagen being the six hundredth active OPC Foundation member.
In a joint effort, 17 partners and VDW created umati (universal machine tool interface). umati is based on an OPC UA companion specification. OPC UA was chosen as the ideal communication platform for different industrial devices due to its open data model.
When the OPC Foundation was asked by we.conect to take part in the first Industrial IoT Hackathon, we were very excited and jumped on board right away. Participants of the IIoT Hackathon had to find a real-world problem and come up with a solution in 24 hours. In most of the cases, OPC UA technology was used.
In this key position, the Chair manages the strategic and tactical directives of the Board of Directors and ensures the marketing, technical, and overall business activities of the OPC Foundation consistently align with its vision and objectives.