by Silvio Merz
Decentralized, independently acting embedded controllers can form an intelligent network for the control of potable water and wastewater plants. OPC-UA is a powerful technology to establish secure and standardized M2M interaction at these plants…
by Nathan Pocock, Director of Compliance
2014 was another successful year for OPC Certification, and 2015 looks to be even busier. Lab availability for testing vendor products in the first quarter 2015 is filling up fast.
by Philippe Maurin, Gustavo Ferraz, Eduardo Freitas, RD&I, ORTENG Equipamentos e Sistemas.
ORTENG is supplying the electrical and automation systems of 29 substations with 1,431 IEDs for oil refinery Abreu e Lima of Petrobras, which is being built at Ipojuca, Brazil. Each substation has at least one SISORT DA system working in a redundant configuration with a total of 44 systems and a total of 80,000 OPC items. Each system has an OPC Server (SISORT-OPC Server) connected to at least two (and up to six) OPC Clients, including DCS OPC Clients and Event Recorder OPC Clients.
by Georg Suess, Operational Marketing, and Vaclav Bouse, Product Manager, Softing Industrial Automation GmbH
With the industry-wide trend towards horizontal and vertical integration, intelligence is moving from supervisory control systems to local components. This development is leading to a growing need for communication for which the open OPC UA standard provides an ideal solution because it can also be used for embedded devices.
by Darek Kominek, Matrikon
A new interface standard for subsea control systems, called MDIS, based on OPC-UA, is being developed to make communications between subsea and top side control systems more robust and less expensive to implement in terms of the time and effort needed to setup and maintain them…
by Frans van Dorsselaer, Fox-IT
OPC UA is gaining ground. The attendance at the Interoperability Workshop in Nürnberg last month was higher than ever. The product variety is also increasing; we recognized controlling devices, gateways to legacy and proprietary protocols, operational HMIs, historians, and back office…
by Robert Trask, P.E
As U.S. manufacturing and production moves toward what is generally considered the fourth Industrial Revolution, popularized as “Industry 4.0,” many of the necessary technological components are already in place. However, there is some additional ground that must be covered. A consensus is forming around the notion that the primary component preventing the revolution from reaching full speed is wider acceptance of communication standards. So how can we consistently, and with less effort, exchange data between the various components of a highly connected industrial machine or process?
by Nathan Pocock, Director of Technology and Compliance, OPC Foundation
It seems as though everyone has now heard of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 and the opportunities ahead. But are you prepared to benefit from this next technological leap while maximizing your opportunity with minimal risk and cost? One key to success is adopting open standards such as OPC UA, a platform-independent technology that assures interoperability…
by Dan Hebert, Control magazine
OPC is playing a significant role in allowing plants to bridge the gap between process control and building automation systems, according to an article in the November issue of Control magazine by senior technical editor Dan Hebert. There are multiple reasons to bring them together, and others to keep them apart.
Security and interoperability for data and communication are key topics for the Industry 4.0 initiative and the Internet of Things. An efficient network of sensors, field devices and controllers up to the Cloud for new services and Big Data can be realized with the OPC-Unified Architecture (OPC UA). That was the message delivered at the OPC Foundation press conference during November’s SPS/IPC/Drives 2014 in Nuremberg, Germany.