MTConnect is a widely adopted standard for machine tools, robots, and other manufacturing equipment as confirmed at the IMTS show last month. A new MTConnect – OPC UA Companion Specification is set for release before the end of the year.
Two collaborations are highlighted this month. Harmonization work has begun in the Industrie 4.0 Asset Administration Shell (I4AAS) Working Group along with the ZVEI and VDMA to bring the I4AAS into OPC UA. And the VDW has adopted OPC UA as its interoperability foundation for Machine Tool Builders.
Practical security recommendations for building OPC UA Applications provides both application guidelines and an overview of the OPC UA security concept itself, and how to use it. As industrial systems use networking and digitalization, new security challenges that are created need to be tackled systematically.
The ARC Advisory Group report concludes OPC UA is well positioned to serve as the data connectivity foundation for companies looking to deploy IIoT and I4.0 based solutions. It predicts the existing global OPC install base of over 45 million units is expected to expand 45% annually for the next 5 years.
How to realize secure data exchange and communication in industry? The OPC Foundation Security User Group answers this question by publishing its first white-paper “Practical Security Recommendations.”
The VDMA prioritized its activities on OPC UA and hereby presents an important position paper to the machine and plant engineering sector. The VDMA guideline “Industrie 4.0 Communication Guideline Based on OPC UA” should be understood as a practice-oriented tool. It shows actionable steps that help to implement the Industrie 4.0 communication in a company using OPC UA.
In other words: It is not a question of OPC UA vs. MQTT vs. AMQP… it is a question of OPC UA over what transport is best. MQTT and AMQP are options. Also, not quite on the OPC UA bandwagon? Read this White Paper.
The OPC Foundation is pleased to announce that it has joined The Open Group and plans to actively participate in the Open Process Automation Forum initiative.
If you’re one of those automation engineers who’ve been ignoring OPC UA and the whole IoT and Cloud business, it’s time to get serious about it. Yes, it hasn’t been our bread and butter in the past but the times, they are a-changing.
The era of digital transformation is taking shape with FDT’s native integration of OPC UA providing information modeling and ongoing advancements through FITS™ for Sensor-to-Cloud and Enterprise-wide Connectivity
The OPC Foundation has announced an open-source implementation of the OPC UA technology, available on GitHub to truly enable the OPC community’s successful adoption of OPC UA across all markets and all platforms.
As information workflows cross competence domains in several directions, users and providers start looking for a way to coalesce those standards into a farther-reaching, whole-encompassing interoperability “grammar”.
That is one of the main reasons why OPC UA was created.
Any client that needs to work with an OPC UA Server has to understand the information model present in the server and discover the instance of the model to be able to wire up to the correct nodes to exchange data. The usage of NodesetFiles [sic] greatly simplifies the exchange of OPC UA information models and the configuration of clients and servers. Users can be assured that their configuration is correct and it can minimize testing of systems.