Articles and News

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.

Phoenix Contact, Renesas, and Siemens will host several one-day training workshops where attendees will have the opportunity to create a PROFINET device in less than three hours with the Renesas TPS-1

Visitors to the Beckhoff booth will again be able to “BYOD”, using their own smartphones and tablets to connect with PC-based control demos – including a wall of IoT-enabled devices, plus articulated robot arms from Stäubli – using any mobile device with a web browser.

With the new coupler, users can effectively achieve communication between differing parts of a line on separate networks, increasing transparency and integration.

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.

The option allows PLCs running the Modbus industrial automation protocol to connect to Alicat instruments over Ethernet cable.

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.

The specification “PLCopen Safe Motion” version 1.0 – official release – is now available on the PLCopen website for downloading. This new solution is based on an existing functionality as already specified in PLCopen Safety: SF_SafetyRequest.

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.

By Andrew McIntyre, Texas Instruments At the core of Industry 4.0 is the need for reliable communication networks. These networks are closely tied to real-time operational needs; therefore, they must be able to handle information in a deterministic and redundant 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.