Interview: OPC Test Lab Certifications
By Bill Lydon, Automation.com
The OPC Foundation is launching certification labs to ensure a high level of quality and reliability of OPC products.
Automation.com’s Contributing Editor Bill Lydon interviewed Tom Burke, OPC Foundation President & Executive Director and Paul Hunkar, Director of Compliance for the OPC Foundation and Consultant engineer for ABB, to learn more about the certification.

Don't judge a supplier by its name
By Frank Hurtte, Contributing Author.
For those of us who live and breathe the rarified vapors of technology based automation, it's pretty hard to fathom how life existed without electronic automation. Yet, it has been a short 30 years since the venerable PLC became anything more than a novelty outside of the Big 3 in Detroit. Sometime in the late 1970s, microprocessors changed our lives forever. Since those early days, the power of these tiny chips forever changed the way we think about manufacturing.

What is OPC UA and how does it affect your world?
Plant Engineering, May 2008
By Simone Massaro, ICONICS
OPC-UA is an important building block that enables users to build the next generation of software automation solutions. With complete backward compatibility ensured, vendors will have much to gain – and nothing to lose – by adopting the new OPC Unified Architecture.

The Year of .... OPC-UA
Control Engineering Asia, April 2008
The Chinese Year of the Rat also spells launch time for the long awaited OPC-UA specification, and the furry rodent actually has a lot in common with the latest version of the automation system interface standard.

Communicating Building Information Across the Enterprise with OPC and BACnet
By Eric Murphy, MatrikonOPC
Building automation systems have information to relay about energy management, optimized operating conditions, and asset utilization. Unfortunately, they are all speaking different languages and running into application barriers. These systems can be connected and the obstacles overcome using standard, open protocols: OPC and BACnet.

Browse these and more articles and white papers on the OPC portal.

OPC Foundation starts Technical Advisory Blog
MatrikonOPC's Eric Muphy was selected by the OPC Foundation to launch the official OPC Foundation Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Blog

With or without you?
By Bob Erickson, MatrikonOPC
White paper describes how Matrikon’s OPC server works with Honeywell’s TotalPlant Solution (TPS)/TDC 3000.

Gateway to Industrial Interoperability
By MatrikonOPC and Rockwell Automation
OPC provides standardized data access and Rockwell Automations’s FactoryTalk Gateway
opens the door to integrated production and performance. Paper describes how they work.

Independent OPC Certification Test Lab in Europe
By OPC Foundation
The first independent certification test lab is opening in Europe, at the facility of Ascolab. Ascolab staff has been actively involved in OPC since the beginning of OPC. The principals of Ascolab are the original developers of the OPC Foundation compliance test tools and have continued to enhance and maintain the tools over the life of OPC.

Browse these and more resources and literature on the OPC portal.

Wonderware steels Nucor
South Africa Instrumentation & Control, May 2008
Nucor’s mill in Berkeley, South Carolina, updated the InTouch application already in place with Wonderware’s IndustrialSQL Server historian and Application Server.

OPC Drives Overall Equipment Efficiency from 65% to 75%
By Thomas R. Cutler
"Supporting OPC creates great new opportunities for collecting data from production equipment in real time, performing statistical analysis on the data and then feeding information back to operators, engineers or to the equipment itself," says Byron Shetler, Chief Technology Officer for Hertzler.

Linux to ControlLogix solution uses OPC
Control Engineering Europe, April 2008
At Task Force Tips, product orders are fulfilled by a robotic picker that moves among hundreds of parts bins on a 100-foot-long, multilevel picking line. TFT decided to overhaul the robot, using ControlLogix PACs, servo drives, and TOP Server OPC Server and the Cogent OPC DataHub from Software Toolbox.

Even Better Than the Real Thing
Control Engineering Asia, April 2008
By Bob Erickson
OPC connectivity enables a legacy Honeywell DCS to take its rightful place as the cornerstone of a unified plant control structure.

Solutia R&D Powered by OPC
By Matrikon
Solutia used a MatrikonOPC Server for the legacy Moore APACS to enable data interchange between APACS, OPC DA clients, and the process data historian (AspenTech’s InfoPlus.21).

Browse these and more application stories on the OPC portal.

MatrikonOPC Level 1 & 2 - OPC Integration and Diagnostics
The workshop will be made up of lectures, PowerPoint presentations, and hands-on exercises. It will be an open and friendly environment that encourages discussion and participation. Students are welcome to discuss current connectivity issues they are faced with and learn from one another.

MatrikonOPC OPC Level 3 - OPC Application Programming
The course focuses on the detailed description of the OPC DA specifications, and hands on development of OPC clients and servers, and standard software interface requirements.

Inductive Automation offers free online training for FactorySQL
Flash-based tutorials illustrate the ins and outs of FactoryPMI SCADA and FactorySQL OPC to SQL data logger.

OPC Training Seminars
The OPC Foundation and its sponsoring members will host a series of eight one-day training seminars. These free seminars are tailored for end-users, systems integrators and OEMs, and are designed to cover the fundamentals of OPC including Servers, Clients, OPC Data Access, OPC Unified Architecture, Best Practices and Compliance.

OPC and DCOM - free video training
OPC Training Institute (OPCTI) has published a free 6-part video on setting up DCOM for use with OPC. Titled "OPC & DCOM: 5 Things you need to know", the videos can be streamed from the OPCTI site (where you'll also find a whitepaper), or downloaded from Google Video.

Browse these and more training and seminar opportunities on the OPC portal.

• Mynah upgrades MiMiC process modeling software

Browse these and more Product Announcements on the OPC portal.

Search all Products by keyword, category, manufacturer or release date.

InduSoft Launches Certified Integrator Program
Certification entitles integrators to discount pricing on runtime licenses, special pricing on InduSoft products, and free technical training--all without annual support fees.

Rockwell Automation selects MatrikonOPC for FactoryTalk
Combining MatrikonOPC technology with the FactoryTalk Gateway provides unlimited secure OPC access to plant systems.

Opto 22 joins Kepware's Vendor Managed Protocol program
This program enables Opto 22 to develop and maintain protocol plug-ins for Kepware’s KEPServerEX communications product.

Matrikon signs CapuTech as distributor
CapuTech will act as an exclusive reseller and systems integrator for Matrikon Suite products in Texas and Louisiana.

Software Toolbox OPC DataLogger passes OPC Test
Data Logger passes certification tests administered by the OPC Foundation’s Independent Certification Test Lab.

Browse these and more company and organizational news on the OPC portal.

China uses Wonderware to modernize railway stations for Olympics
Wonderware System Platform 3.0, Historian and InTouch 10.0 HMI will be installed at four railway stations and operate the "Passenger Information System."

MatrikonOPC provides data connectivity for Nova BioProfile FLEX analyzer
BioProfile FLEX reduces cell culture analysis time, labor, and operating costs by consolidating chemistry/gases/electrolytes, cell density/viability, and osmolality into a single workstation.

GE Fanuc supplies PLCs and HMI to Macawber Beekay
Equipment includes PLC-based control panels, Proficy HMI/SCADA, CIMPLICITY, and VersaMax I/O to control ash material handling at Macawber Beekay's plant in New Delhi, India

OPC DataHub connects new and existing systems
By Cogent
BP’s control center in Tulsa, Oklahoma is responsible for the transport of oil and natural gas from South-Central and Midwest oil fields to locations nationwide. They decided to add leak detection to their SCADA system. The challenge was to feed process data from Sybase database to the leak detection system, which had available an OPC server.

Webinar - Unleash the Power of OPC: Part 1, Developing custom applications with OPC & Visual Studio .NET
June 18, 2008 - 11:00a.m. EDT
Spend an informative hour with OPC and .NET experts who will show you the many ways that you can leverage OPC technology in your custom business and manufacturing software applications. Whether you are using the latest and greatest Visual Studio.NET technologies or using the time tested Visual Studio 6/VB/C++, this presentation is sure to open your eyes to how OPC can help you insure your custom applications integrate well in the OPC world.

Japanese Interoperability Workshop 2008
June 18-20, 2008 Tokyo
All OPC Foundation members can use this test session as not only a mechanism to validate their products, but to also debug and diagnose any interoperability problems that may be discovered. This year's session will allow up to a maximum qty (40) participants to validate Data Access (V2 and V3) interoperability, XML-DA, Alarms and Events and Historical Data Access.

Webinar - Unleash the Power of OPC: Part 2, Maximizing Your Information Integration Choices wth OPC Data Access, HMI/SCADA
June 26, 2008 - 11:00a.m. EDT
Spend an informative hour with OPC experts who will will help you build on, refresh, and extend your knowledge of how to use OPC Data Access in your manufacturing and business software applications. We're taking the presentation on OPC Data Access Applications from our highly popular vendor neutral OPC Road Shows series and bringing it to you online in the comfort of your own office.

ISA Expo
October 14-16, 2008 Houston, Texas
Organized around six core automation and control themes, ISA EXPO 2007 provides attendees a content-rich environment that offers unlimited opportunity for exploration of key technologies, professional growth, and interaction with like minded professionals.

OPC UA DevCon 2008
October 27-29, 2008 Munich, Germany
Attendees will have the opportunity to understand the business model and learn about the UA components and specifications, the technology used to deploy OPC UA products and solutions, plus a detailed dive-down into the core of UA.

Browse more industry events on the OPC portal.

Add an event to our calendar.

I hope you enjoyed this OPC update. If you have any comments or suggestions regarding the content in this e-newsletter or on Automation.com, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Rick Zabel
Vice President, Publisher
Automation.com

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