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OPC 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.
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Do PLCs Eliminate Need for a DCS?
By Bill Lydon, Contributing Editor
In the past it was fairly easy to determine whether a PLC or a DCS was right for an application but in recent years this has become more difficult. It is argued that more powerful PLC products coupled with new software tools provide an integrated process control system rivaling a distributed control system (DCS) for process control applications.
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Automation Insights Network
By Rick Zabel, Publisher
Automation Insights Network is a select group of controls and automation professionals who agree to help us cover news, emerging trends and technologies on various automation topics. Every two months, we will ask people in the Network to share their observations, knowledge and expertise with us. We take that information, distill it, and pass it on to our reporters and editors for use in future stories.
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Upstairs, Downstairs
Control, October 2008
By Bob Sperber
In the control arena, all DCS vendors either offer a historian or tie to others, and they are typically installed with a firewall above. This presents problems for OPC, but not for SOA-generation tools such as Web services and XML
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What's Sweet About OPC UA?
Automation World, September 2008
By Rob Spiegel
While it’s still officially in draft form, OPC UA is already getting adopted in the marketplace. Its individual parts have been released over the past year with the final parts getting released in just the past couple of months.
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ISA - Change the name to represent the industry
By Rick Zabel, Automation.com
The proposed name change of ISA (to "International Society of Automation") is up for a vote again during ISA Expo in Houston, October 14-16, 2008. Last year, the change was voted down, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument against the change. And there are many reasons for the change. If ISA is truly the global society of automation professionals, then its name should reflect its cause. It's time for a change!
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Open Network Options
Control Design, September 2008
By Paul Miller and Joe Feeley
OPC Unified Architecture (UA), abandons the Microsoft–based structure of its much-criticized, DCOM-based, OPC DA predecessor and embraces open, vendor-independent Web Services. OPC UA ties together functions from earlier OPC specifications and enables a common services-oriented architecture (SOA) environment.
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PROFIBUS hits new highs, PROFINET to follow?
By Bill Lydon, Contributing Editor
This year's PTO General Assembly Meeting again was attended by an enthusiastic group of users, suppliers, and distributors that apply PROFIBUS and PROFINET technology. Michael Bryant, Executive Director, was master of ceremonies and forecasted PROFINET will be the leading Ethernet Technology for automation applications.
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The Every Man’s Guide to OPC
This paper explains how OPC solves modern industry’s growing challenge of accessing and sharing data between devices, controllers, and applications regardless of what their native communications are or what vendor they are from.
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State of Manufacturing & Automation in the U.S. Looks Good
Could it be that high fuel prices, the weak dollar and crises in the U.S. manufacturing industry are creating opportunities? Andy Chatha of ARC Advisory Group thinks so. He says the U.S. industry has suddenly become competitive on the world market, and companies are no longer moving operations overseas. Instead, many are expanding their facilities, and he predicts a boom in automation right here in the U.S.
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Meet the Next Generation of OPC
Sensors, July 2008
By: Tony Paine, Kepware Technologies
A new generation of OPC, known as OPC-UA, is upon us. This latest generation of OPC-UA delivers solutions to problems of the past, adds significant new capabilities, and provides a foundation for future developments.
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Introduction to OPC for Building Automation
By Darek Kominek, Matrikon
HMIs, historians, and analysis and reporting packages that originate in the process control industry may not have drivers that support such protocols as BACnet or other building automation protocols. OPC can solve the problem.
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Honeywell 2008 Users Group - Heroes Gather in Phoenix
By Bill Lydon, Contributing Editor
The 33rd annual Honeywell Users Group Conference was held June 15 - 19, 2008 at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, AZ with over 700 customers in attendance. According to Honeywell Vice President/General Manager, "The conferences super hero theme, Power to Perform, highlights the heroic efforts of process industry professionals to perform well despite rising costs and resource constraints."
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Taking out the Garbage: Making Windows XP suitable as a HMI Platform
By Marty Huff, MSI Tec
Windows XP can provide a robust HMI environment, and has several advantages over either Windows CE or Linux. Out of the box, however, Windows XP is not suitable to act as a HMI / SCADA platform. There are several "tricks" that can be performed to "take out the garbage" thus creating a stable, robust, and secure environment for your application.
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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.
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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.
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Regional Manufacturing Expos Prove Most Valuable
By Thomas R. Cutler
Deciding which conferences, webinars, and expos are worthwhile for manufacturing engineers and buyers to attend often feels like a dangerous yellow brick road, never knowing quite what to expect.
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ABB is powered up and running at high efficiency!
By Bill Lydon
The products and services shown at ABB Automation World in Houston, Texas along with the enthusiasm of the ABB employees and users would seem to explain why the company’s 1st quarter 2008 earnings beat investment analysts’ consensus by over 40%. The three-day trade show and conference ran from April 29 through May 1 in Houston, Texas. There was a great deal of energy and enthusiasm at the event which showcased ABB products, ABB services, partner products, and over 300 workshops/training sessions.
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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.
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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.
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Implementing Successful OPC Projects
By Eric Murphy, MatrikonOPC
The issues associated with OPC projects include multiple data paths, data throughput, guaranteed data delivery and redundancy, network interoperability, communication disruption and recovery, maintainability and geographically disperse systems.
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Winning the Battle for Interoperability
By Eric Murphy, MatrikonOPC
End users who purchase OPC-compliant products expect reliability, full data information integrity and validated, secure interoperability. The product should seamlessly integrate with existing architecture. To ensure this, the OPC Foundation created the OPC Enhanced Certification Program.
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Communicating To the Enterprise Isn’t Science Fiction
By Eric Murphy, MatrikonOPC
Organizations are using OPC to integrate realtime and historic building information into existing business applications to improve the balance between people, infrastructure, facilities and their overall impact on the enterprise bottom line.
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Getting Standards Under One Roof
Managing Automation, March 2008
By Stephanie Neil
Most application integration has relied on proprietary point interfaces or middleware that multiplies over time, becoming expensive to build and maintain. What many want is one language that can be spoken between the plant floor and enterprise applications. Standards groups are at work. (Registration required)
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Creating Secure OPC Architectures
By Adriel Michaud, MatrikonOPC
Technical guide on how to secure typical OPC implementations. It covers OPC DA, HDA, and A&E, securing OPC Servers from unauthorized OPC Client access, and restricting authorized OPC Clients to only the functions necessary.
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Troubleshooting OPC and DCOM: Quick Start Guide
by Randy Kondor, OPC Training Institute
OPC is a powerful industrial communication standard. However, OPC relies on having DCOM work properly. Luckily, DCOM problems can usually be overcome with relatively simple configuration changes as documented in this whitepaper.
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OPC & DCOM: 5 things you need to know
by Randy Kondor, OPC Training Institute
OPC technology relies on Microsoft's COM and DCOM to exchange data between automation hardware and software; however it can be frustrating for new users to configure DCOM properly. This whitepaper discusses the steps necessary to get DCOM working properly and securely.
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Using Operator Interfaces to Optimize Performance of Industrial Wireless Networks
By Jim Ralston, Prosoft Technology
This article will explore the use of a wireless diagnostic OLE for Process Control (OPC) server technology to embed diagnostic information in human machine interfaces (HMIs), thus optimizing industrial wireless network performance.
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Vulnerabilities identified in SCADA systems
InfoWorld, May 2007
By Matt Hines
The first remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities in Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems have been identified by researchers.
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New study reveals OPC usage may be putting major industries at risk
CONTROL, April 2007
A survey of 113 OPC users from Fortune 500 companies show that OPC deployments may be putting industry at risk. Companies are using it for mission critical applications, are allowing access from potentially insecure networks, and don’t understand how to secure OPC properly. The report was produced jointly by security experts at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), Digital Bond and Byres Research.
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How United Architecture Fits Into The Existing World Of OPC
The Industrial Ethernet Book, April 2007
By John Weber and Nathan Pocock, Software Toolbox
The OPC Foundation has released new OPC Unified Architecture specifications and there's a lot of information out there to absorb. And how does Windows Vista factor into all this?
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Don’t shackle yourself to the wrong platform
Chemical Processing, March 2007
By Dane Overfield, Exele Information Systems
Today, process data are readily available at many levels, from instrumentation to higher-level data historians and OPC servers. Choosing the right platform can be key to successfully implementing robust and maintainable process calculations at your company.
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OPC UA enables Business Intelligence
CONTROL, March 2007
By Eric Murphy, Columnist
industry. Business Intelligence (BI) is a popular term describing the result of in-depth analysis of detailed business data from various systems. CRM, ERP, SCM and other competitive technologies all provide data and analysis, but how can these systems be unified into a complete business-wide decision platform? OPC UA offers the promise of unifying individual business units into true enterprise-wide solutions.
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OPC, Modbus and Fieldbus, Oh my
CONTROL, March 2007
By Eric Murphy, Columnist
Manufacturers are faced with a multitude of protocol choices; OPC, Modbus, Profibus, BACnet, Foundation Fieldbus… the list goes on. The reality is that it is not simply a choice of one protocol versus another. It requires integrating multiple complementary protocols, each with individual strengths, to achieve the goal of a true enterprise system.
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Debunk plant myths about diagnostics
Chemical Processing, February 2007
By George Buckbee, ExperTune, Inc
Using industry-standard OPC communications, you can pull real-time data directly into the Performance Supervision System. Many plants have already invested in process historians. Most commercially-available process historians support the OPC Historical Data Access (HDA) standard. OPC-HDA allows the gathering of real-time data directly from the historian, with no additional load on the control network.
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Energy saving solutions – Building IT with OPC
CONTROL, February 2007
By Eric Murphy, Columnist
Often when OPC is used in reference to building automation or management systems, it is in terms of being a protocol. OPC and OPC UA offer the potential for much more. OPC provides the advantages of standardized data connectivity among many isolated systems, and industry-proven applications to turn that data into information, and hence into cost and energy savings.
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Plants get help in boosting reliability
Chemical Processing, February 2007
By Mike Spear, editor at large
A relatively new interoperability standard, Open O&M, is a collaborative venture between the OPC Foundation, Scottsdale, Ariz., Open Applications Group (OAG), Marietta, Ga., and Machinery Information Management Open System Alliance (MIMOSA).
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Thoughts on the OPC UA Information Model
OPC Exchange Blog, February 23rd, 2007
By Eric Murphy
A good starting point to understanding what the Information Model might represent, is to think in terms of the OPC Item address space, and Browsing interfaces in OPC DA. The specification described interfaces for viewing and navigating the address space (browse space). It did not dictate how the browse space was built or persisted in the underlying OPC DA COM server
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OPC Exposed Part II at S4
Digital Bond Blog, January 2007
Author: Dale Peterson
It is one thing to admit that an OPC server is rarely implemented with even the limited DCOM security. It is an even larger issue to say that an OPC server can be remotely compromised and used to launch attacks on other systems. Since OPC servers are often exposed in the DMZ this could be a communication chain that could allow control system exploitation from the enterprise network or Internet.
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OPC, PNO, FF, HART continue EDDL work
Control Engineering -- January 2007
ISA SP104 Committee released Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) "draft for ballot" this fall, part of an effort to adopt generic device description language specified by IEC 61804 for device integration. "The committee wants to work toward the adoption of the IEC 61804 standard as an ANSI/ISA standard," said committee chair Terry Blevins. "We're also committed to provide information that will help users and integrators fully utilize the EDDL interface to support a wide gamut of intelligent devices.
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Case Study: Santee Cooper
Santee Cooper’s Rainey Generating Station (RGS) is located near Anderson, South Carolina. RGS is Santee Cooper’s first natural gas fuelled combustion turbine generating plant.
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Accessing Databases Using OPC
In any industry, databases are the foundation of many automation applications. Databases are consistently used as a gateway to interface with the outside world, whether to a process optimization application, Computer Maintenance Management System (CMMS), composition analyzer, or a custom, in-house application.
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Maintaining Healthy IT Assets Maintaining Healthy IT Assets using OPC Technology
Over the past several years, there have been two significant trends in the industrial marketplace. First, control system vendors are using more Ethernet based communication networks and Microsoft operating systems. Second, many companies have an increased focus towards predictive or condition based maintenance. OPC plays an important role in both trends.
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OPC Consideration for Network Security
Cyber security means the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of computers, applications, and digital-based assets. In most organizations, this is the responsibility of the corporate IT group. Unfortunately, whenever IT meets real-time control systems, trouble erupts. So when IT implements different Windows Domains and Firewalls, the first casualty is typically DCOM communication and, consequently, OPC traffic.
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OPC-UA Provides Scaleable Communication between the Plant Floor and Enterprise
Craig Resnick, ARC Advisory Group
Manufacturers and technology providers recognize the importance of integrating, exchanging, and synchronizing data and information between plant floor systems and enterprise systems. Information about the assets of the plant floor systems needs to be provided to the business applications in the enterprise world, providing real-time information to make effective decisions. Therefore, it is important to understand the OPC Foundation’s Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) functionality and its capability to integrate plant floor systems to the enterprise.
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OPC-UA, Linking the Legacy
Craig Resnick, ARC Advisory Group
Dealing with multiple generations of automation products is an issue that affects all manufacturers whose plants are not brand new, regardless of revenue, profitability, industry, application or geography. State-of-the art automation products may be continuously added or used to replace legacy automation products wherever an appropriate business case can be made. This creates a big challenge for manufacturers to find a way to not only provide interoperability between plant floor and enterprise, but also to provide a link between multiple generations of legacy automation products. The OPC Foundation is addressing this challenge with their soon to be introduced OPC Unified Architecture, or OPC-UA.
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OPC UA and bridging the chasm
By Eric Murphy, Advanced Architecture System Design Engineer, Matrikon
As OPC UA begins its approach to the chasm, the infrastructure is is already being laid to ensure it can successfully bridge the gap. OPC UA represents a significant step toward transforming data into information for the enterprise, but that does not mean adopters should have to take a leap of faith to achieve this.
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OPC - the standard that makes other standards interoperable
by Jim Pinto, JimPinto.com
Standards are intrinsically difficult to implement and adopt. In the industrial automation business, OPC is a unifying standard that allows true interoperability. It needs more end-user support and involvement. End-users want standards because, more than anything else, they provide interoperability and reduce dependence on any specific supplier. For this very reason, suppliers only pretend to support standards, when, in reality, the ones they really promote are those that give them a distinct proprietary advantage.
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OPC UA - How Deep Does Interface Standardization Go?
by Eric Murphy, MatrikonOPC
Prior to OPC UA, the most common complaint has been that existing OPC standards are primarily COM based. OPC UA is a service based, cross platform solution, and no longer so Microsoft centered. There are other criticisms that OPC does not do enough to mandate security, configuration, and providing a unified address space or defined item ‘mapping’. Where does the line get crossed from a general interface specification that is open, interoperable and flexible without sacrificing usability, to one that is specialized, rigidly defined and highly integrated?
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OPC Tunneling Eliminates Setup Headaches
From the shop floor to the top floor, OPC is the preferred communication standard for sharing process control data at all levels of the enterprise. But as OPC pours into mainstream acceptance, integrators are finding configurations where OPC can be a hindrance to the panacea of plug-and-play application interconnectivity. The most common situation occurs when applications on different Windows domains must communicate with each other. Still, other designs call for the use of low-bandwidth or unreliable networks. It is in these setups that OPC can make use of new “tunneling” technology, which eliminates the biggest OPC headache for integrators: setting up DCOM.
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