Articles and News

The partnership is intended to provide OPC UA Toolkits and extended consulting, training and development services to North America.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com A common topic of debate revolves around how process system architectures will be shaped in the future. One architectural vision would enable a shift of focus from process efficiency control to business performance control, with increasing levels of monitoring and control.

These walls show the power of the Microsoft commitment to embrace the OPC UA interoperability standard as the secure solution for integration of OT and IT.

As part of their service contract with Lenze, machine builders can collect all the data that is available inside the Lenze controllers. They can then evaluate this data and make it available to their own customers, either as an up-to-date dashboard or in the form of reports providing performance figures.

Samsung Electronics believes that the great potentials of the OPC UA framework could synergy Samsung’s effort to deploy the Industrial IoT edge platform for its manufacturing infrastructures in order to achieve the seamless interoperability aiming for the Industry 4.0.

Krüger A/S provides with its STAR Utility Solution online control solutions that continuously optimize and stabilize the operation of the entire system for water and waste water. Prosys OPC developed for Krüger A/S a scalable, cloud-based solution for the data integration needs in their STAR Utility Solution platform.

This international event, held in Osaka, Japan, on September 14, 2017, will showcase ten OPC UA products from leading industrial automation companies.

As of now, SoftPLC systems for the device platforms PFC 100 from WAGO and SIMATIC IOT2000 from Siemens are also available. Both systems are based on an open Linux operating system and are designed to work in industrial environments.

This program is designed to address a specific need as Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or Industry 4.0 applications and projects proliferate.

Initially developed to train Bedrock end users and partners in programming applications to the IEC 61131-3 standard, the software and the IDE can be used to build PLC, DCS, and SCADA RTU applications that are cryptographically authenticated to the Bedrock platform.

Driven by globalization, intensifying competition and rising customer demand for more options and higher quality products, a connected plant floor has become a necessity. Zebra’s survey shows the number of organizations achieving a fully connected factory is expected to rise dramatically over the next five years.

By introducing change management and version control software from M.A.C. Solutions for more than 400 of its programmable devices (PLCs and HMIs) at its facility in Oxfordshire, Diamond Light Source intends to minimize the risk of machine downtime caused by PLC back-up or software code errors

By Michael LaGrega, Siemens Data gathered by RFID readers can be a critical element in a corporation’s plans to gain increased visibility and understanding of parts, materials and other moveable assets. All of this valuable information can be integrated more easily when standards like OPC-UA with its AutoID companion are employed.

This specification describes the mapping of the Sercos device model and the Sercos device profiles to OPC UA, so that functions and parameters of Sercos devices are made accessible via OPC UA in a vendor-independent manner.

The goal of the conference, which took place on 28th June 2017 at the National Conference Centre in Birmingham,was to expand the horizons for OPC users and systems integrators by improving their knowledge and understanding of OPC technologies, as well as giving attendees an opportunity to view real-world demonstrations of cutting-edge applications for OPC and industrial data

By Bob McIlvride, Skkynet Cloud Systems More and more companies are recognizing the value hidden in their process data, and are looking at ways to tap into it. If you need to provide access to OPC data on your plant system, say for analytics, predictive maintenance, or real-time dashboards, you'll need to secure your system from the kind of threat that WannaCry poses

By John Rinaldi, Real Time Automation In their latest series of announcements, it’s clear that OPC UA is key to Microsoft’s strategy of entering and dominating the factory floor through its Azure cloud services.

Panacea Update Manager automates the process of deploying Microsoft patches on industrial networks by allowing only automation vendor approved patches to be deployed on the appropriate computers.

By Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation In November 2016, the Industrie 4.0 Platform published a checklist for classifying and advertising products as Industrie 4.0 “Basic,” “Ready,” or “Full”. To comply with the “Industrie 4.0 communication” criterion, even the lowest category requires the product to be addressable over the network via TCP/UDP or IP and to integrate at least the OPC UA information model.

Over two days, Festo's course will assist leaders to identify opportunities for change within their own workplaces and help them recognise how and where to apply the principles of Industry 4.0.