Articles and News

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.

By Jan Pingel & Matthew Burd, Honeywell Process Solutions One of the most important characteristics of a connected plant is the ability to increase and enhance collaboration to help solve previously unsolvable problems. The emergence of the cloud-based historian is a key component, therefore, to bringing the connected plant to life because it greatly enables this type of collaboration.

Mr. van Vuuren has been certified as a Certified Licensing Professional, and is currently in charge of service sales in the EMEA and APAC regions for Silicon Valley-based Harmonic, and will be a valuable asset in assisting Skkynet with complex partnership and sales negotiations.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation The combination of data from multiple platforms is now possible because of the OPC UA protocol - an in-demand feature - as the Internet of Things (IoT) gains traction. This article discusses how the open source protocol OPC UA is beneficial for automation.

Comtrol’s IO-Link Masters are available in three industrial Ethernet protocols: EtherNet/IP, Modbus TCP and PROFINET IO, which are all capable of running OPC UA with MultiLink.

Kepware and Microsoft’s industrial IoT solutions integrate with the help of OPC UA. KEPServerEX can move industrial control data to the Azure cloud platform by utilizing both OPC UA and MQTT via the Azure IoT Gateway SDK and Azure IoT Hub.

By Alex West, IHS Markit Overall, a number of themes could be discerned at HANNOVER MESSE this year, including cost-cutting, production efficiency, downtime reduction, quicker time-to-market, product customization, and lower development costs.

The specification provides device manufacturers with an official foundation to implement EtherCAT P technology, which enables data and power transmission on a single, standard cable.

The OPC Foundation European Certification lab has successfully been accredited and the first successful certified product was a Siemens RFID reader.

Microsoft has provided, in conjunction with the OPC Foundation, an set of sample applications, inclusive of reference clients, reference servers, an aggregation server, an OPC classic wrapper and a web application to quickly display OPC UA telemetry data sent to the cloud.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com We've received a number of comments and questions from vendors about The Open Group's effort to push for open process automation standards. Tn the aim of encouraging more discussion on the topic, we're sharing some of these questions in order to provide some more clarity on its importance.

The target is to offer TSN as firmware upgrade to the users of netX technologies. Hilscher developed a firmware upgrade for TSN which can turn a standard real-time ethernet device into a TSN enabled device.

With the integration of the OPC Unified Architecture Standard (OPC UA) into operation and control systems, both existing machines and new designs can be made IoT ready, and so can be integrated into the Smart Factory environment.

Products from both companies will be showcased, demonstrating how to integrate and deliver edge computing applications and connect real-world signals and industrial “things” to the digital world of information technology, mobile, and cloud computing.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com Connecting the manufacturing plant floor with the business enterprise through a single, open network has been an elusive goal in today's automation industry. Many industrial automation people believe that TSN will become a high volume, low cost technology with adoption by automotive and consumer industries

Teel Plastics was inspired to find a solution that would allow operators to control all pieces electronically and reduce human error. They ultimately found that Kepware’s IoT Gateway for KEPServerEX provided the way to control all the essential components.

By Bill Lydon, Editor, Automation.com Connectivity is the name of the game in today’s IIoT atmosphere and ODVA is the latest to join the push for open communication standards. ODVA’s Common Industrial Cloud Interface (CICI) Special Interest Group is working on enhancements to ODVA specifications to connect CIP (Common Industrial Protocol) protocols, EtherNet/IP & DeviceNet with cloud applications.