- By Bill Lydon
- February 20, 2024
- Feature
Summary
Progress has been made on achieving the vision of an Open Process Automation system architecture.
Creating a complete open process automation architecture is a big, audacious goal that requires a broad base of users to buy into the business case. In the eight years since the vision was first presented at the 2016 ARC Industry Leadership Forum, a lot of money, personnel and resources have been invested into achieving the goal. At the most recent ARC Forum, held Feb. 4-8 in Orlando, Florida, attendees enjoyed many presentations and discussions focused on the state of development of the Open Process Automation system architecture.
Details, including links and resources follow, but here are the takeaways:
- A published standard exists: Version 2.1 - Functional Bid Specification
- The Open Process Automation™ Forum (OPAF) has more than 100 members, 18% of which are end users
- Ten user-members are making progress on their test beds
- The Open Process Automation System Design goal has been completed and includes field controllers.
Background
At the annual ARC Forum in 2016, Don Bartusiak, who at the time, was chief engineer, process control at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering, gave a presentation expressing frustration with closed architecture DCS systems from existing vendors.Bartusiak noted that many current industrial automation industry architectures are built around the 1970’s Purdue model and are becoming increasingly out of step with major advancements in technology and connectivity, such as Internet of Things (IoT) and personal computing. He and others responded by creating the Open Process Automation Forum to define open system standards. The creation of this group served as a call to action.
At time I wrote an article called "Compliance of the Victim” that championed the idea that if users are unhappy, they should get up and do something; now, many have. The Open Process Automation Forum now has more than 100 members.
O-PAS™ visions and mission
The mission and vision of the O-PAS™ Standard, a standard of The Open Group, is to develop, publish and evolve an open architecture and specification supported by industry end users, suppliers and integrators. The O-PAS Standard defines an open, interoperable and secure architecture for industrial process automation systems, using existing and emerging standards whenever possible—a standard of standards.
Achieving business goals
I had a discussion in the early days of O-PAS with a high-level Exxon executive who said that if companies hope to grow, they need to leveraging control and automation systems using open systems technology. Companies that are not burdened by existing, outdated DCS systems would have a competitive advantage as they leverage new technologies and concepts. I certainly agree, and I have provided perspectives on this topic in the form of editorials for quite some time. For example, an article about leveraging solid disruptive innovations increases competitiveness appeared in InTech magazine in 2017.
Strategic decision
Investment in industrial automation technology should be a strategic business decision, within the framework of world manufacturing competition, not based on existing sunk costs. Manufacturing companies are becoming more aware of the need to modernize production methods and automation to compete globally, but many still find themselves stuck in a sunk investment trap. This focus on past investment could ruin their production competitiveness and jeopardize their future. The digital revolution, which improves the performance of process companies, is accelerating the digitization and integration from sensor to enterprise, supply chain and cloud applications. The goals of O-PAS are to embrace and deploy new technologies for competitive production advantage improving profits.Developing economies logically have a key advantage in this area because they are typically not burdened with legacy automation systems and machine investments. Taking advantage of the new technologies and initiatives has allowed them to leapfrog organizations that are still attached to older, more expensive legacy equipment. This makes an analysis of sunk cost versus new investment a more compelling task.
Revolution vs. evolution
Major shifts in technology have created debates that revolve around revolution versus evolution. I find that this debate needs to be clearly understood to make intelligent, competitive decisions. I have explored this in several articles. Evolutionary investments into existing manufacturing and production automation systems may be a example of “throwing good money after bad,” which can have devastating competitive consequences, particularly with the influx of new competitive manufacturers who can leverage the latest technologies without squarely facing sunk cost trade-offs. On the other hand, the sunk cost reasoning is that further investments or commitments to existing automation system architectures are justified because the resources already invested will be lost if not perpetuated. Yet, the sunk cost fallacy is a mistake in reasoning driving decisions without considering the future factors, such as competitive manufacturing environment, lost future business and opportunities for accelerated growth. The sunk cost fallacy becomes more dangerous as users further invest in evolution of existing automation systems. For example, Henry Ford applied innovative manufacturing technologies and dominated the automotive industry. Later, United States auto manufacturers lost significant market due to foreign competition that aggressively applied the latest manufacturing technologies.
O-PAS proving concepts
Members of the organization have been proving concepts, software and open hardware in test beds and early Field trial deployments. This is analogous to how DCS suppliers have always done product development and is an important step in debugging and refining designs solutions before making them widely available as quality assured products. The Open Process Automation organization provided a progress update.
| Company | Test bed/Prototype | Field Trial/Deployments |
| ExxonMobil | X | X |
| BASF | X | |
| Georgia-Pacific | X | |
| Saudi Aramco | X | |
| Dow Chemical | X | |
| Equinor | X | |
| Shell | X | |
| Petronas | X | |
| Reliance | X | |
| Cargill | X | X |
Embracing open standards
O-PAS is fully embracing open standards to achieve end-user goals rather than protecting existing proprietary DCS architecture. This is an important point in contrast to proprietary DCS and industrial automation suppliers that selectively use parts of industrial and process automation standards in measured ways to maintain the majority of the respective proprietary system. I will describe this further in another follow-on article.Standards O-PAS is leveraging:
- OPC UA
- OPC UA Information Model
- OPC UA Alarms & Conditions
- OPC UA Client/Server Network Communication
- OPC UA FX
- IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission)
- IEC 61131 Control Programming Language & Architecture
- IEC 61499 Control Programming Language & Architecture
- IEC 62243 Security Architecture
- DTMF Redfish
- AutomationML
- Modular Type Package (MTP) NAMUR
Thoughts and observations
The Open Group Open Process Automation Forum is a complete design of an open process automation system including field controllers and has come a long way since the first version 1.0 preliminary standard specification.My view is the highest-level goals with the greatest business benefit:
- Control System Applications Reuse Regardless of Vendor
- Open Industrial Computers as Field Controllers
- Multivendor Interoperability
- Open Sensor to Business Enterprise/Cloud Communications
- Open Standard Data & Application Models
The current O-PAS Standard Version 2.1 available for download reads like a functional bid specification at this point in time. The website describes the current standard.The Open Group Open Process Automation Forum would be better served with more members from the user community. The majority of the 100+ Open Group Open Process Automation Forum Members are suppliers and 18 user companies. The user companies are primarily process control/DCS users. Ten of the supplier companies are traditional industrial automation vendors, and only a few are enthusiastically contributing. Organizations interested in learning about Open Process Automation Forum Membership can do so here.
About The Author
Bill Lydon is a Digital Manufacturing Transformation Industry 4.0 Consultant available for consulting and advisory projects. See his website for more information. Lydon has 35 years of experience designing and applying technology in the automation and controls industry. He started his career as a designer of computer-based machine tool controls; in other positions, he applied programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and process control technology.
Working at a large company, Lydon served a two-year stint as part of a five-person task group that designed a new generation building automation system including controllers, networking and supervisory & control software. He also designed software for chiller and boiler plant optimization. Bill was product manager for a multimillion-dollar controls and automation product line and later cofounder and president of an industrial control software company.
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