Articles and News

By Alex Herbert, Kepware Technologies Since implementing the IoT Gateway for KEPServerEX, Faurecia was able to decrease its transparency project from a complicated six-month scope to a functioning solution in just a couple of days.

The OPC Foundation has committed resources to moderate/maintain and extend the technology to keep pace with technology changes in the industry as well as the extensions to the OPC UA architecture and corresponding companion specification.

Courses include OPC Workshops for OPC Classic and Cyber Security for OPC.

By Bill Lydon, Editor ODVA believes EtherNet/IP is ideally positioned for the fourth industrial revolution and the world of integrated cyber physical systems. This article summarizes ODVA's initiatives for the process industries, Industry 4.0 and field device configuration/integration.

By Bill Lydon, Editor Many industry experts believe OPC UA is an enabling technology for the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. OPC UA enables multivendor multiplatform secure reliable interoperability for moving data and information from the embedded world to the enterprise.

FLIR Intelligent Transportation Systems develops a wide variety of hardware and software solutions for vehicular/pedestrian traffic video detection and monitoring. Many of these systems rely on the open standard OPC UA to obtain information from the different subsystems.

The market increasingly demands individualized products. Product life cycles are getting shorter and average lot sizes are getting smaller. Considering this, cost efficient production in a globalized and resource limited environment requires a highly flexible (IT-) infrastructure that also works well in cross-enterprise networks. It requires a reshaped automation data pyramid.

Besides the existing Request/Response mechanism, which requires a “standing” connection between an OPC Client (data consumer) and an OPC Server (data provider), OPC UA will be enhanced with an additional communication schema following the principles of Publish-Subscribe.

AutomationML is a data exchange standard for engineering data standardized in IEC 62814.

The new edition is available for comments until April 8, 2016.

Almost every industrial plant will end up with a mix of wired and wireless technology. Ultimately, choose the solution that makes sense.

By Gerrit Boysen and Mariam Coladonato, Phoenix Contact The requirements placed on a firewall in a production zone are different from those in the office world. Therefore, using an industrial firewall with a NAT function can support the individual, simple segmentation of networks.

By Mike Hannah, Rockwell Automation Legacy networks with only a small number of I/O modules and other devices are being replaced with complex networks that have hundreds of I/O modules. EtherNet/IP features an active infrastructure and can accommodate an almost infinite number of nodes to give manufacturers optimal flexibility when either designing their networks at the onset or expanding them in the future.

HMS says Industrial Ethernet is growing faster than before and now accounts for 38% of the market. EtherNet/IP is in first place within industrial Ethernet globally.

By Glenn Schulz, Managing Director, FDT Group FDT Technology holds the key to integrating a wide range of devices and networks in today’s complex process automation architecture. Ongoing development of this technology, driven by growing instrumentation supplier involvement, is enabling end users to realize the true potential of decentralization, transparency, integration, and a unified view of all data and functions within the manufacturing enterprise.

Elite adds Vibration Monitoring and Profibus Network health checks to its support services.

The OPC standard allows the EyeSens sensors and EyeVision software to function as OPC server.

By Punya Prakash and David Zaucha, Texas Instruments To date, the implementations of EtherCAT slave node have largely been dominated by hardware intensive solutions used to perform on-the-fly real-time processing and synchronization. Recent advances in technology have created programmable system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices that offer very tangible equipment costs savings, versatility and longer life cycles to industrial systems users.

The acquisition will enhance PTC’s portfolio of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and accelerate the company’s entry into the factory setting and Industrial IoT (IIoT).

By Wim Pessemier, KU Leuven Information modeling, or the ability to express not only data but also the meaning of data, is a key concept in the quest to make systems more intelligent, more autonomous and more evolvable.