Middleware offers possibility of seamless and secure data transfer based on OPC UA. Data transfer plays an especially important role in the integration of the production and management domains, with the large number of variables, heterogeneous interfaces, rights management, and specific security requirements being just some of the key challenges faced…

An OPC UA companion specification for CIP to OPC UA Gateways is based on assumptions that the cloud interface will use an OPC UA information model; it will use OPC UA transport mechanisms (MQTT, AMQP or HTTPS) and the cloud interface will use OPC UA defined cybersecurity roles, authentication and…

Exposing EtherNet/IP object via OPC UA Information model provides new technology for EtherNet/IP devices in the process automation. Mapping of CIP objects like Identity, Assembly to OPC UA Information Model will enable standard OPC UA Services to access the objects defining devices in a vendor-neutral way.

Use of a gateway along with OPC UA and MQTT, can provide access to S7 controller machine tool data. This allows important spindle and axis data, such as torque and power consumption, to be read out, processed and become available for condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, and data logging or analysis…

The automation community is continuing to champion the introduction of OPC UA (Unified Architecture) over Time Sensitive Networks (TSN). B&R Automation provides its take on the importance of the technology, benefits for applications and how it fits with POWERLINK and other fieldbus technologies.

Smart devices provide operators not only with I/O data but also with a wealth of information about industrial plant operation. Information collected from field devices such as diagnostic data, status information on devices and specific device parameters can also help plan predictive maintenance programs.

The combination of PackML and OPC UA can be used to solve strategic and machine integration issues facing manufacturers. PackML offers a standard for modeling industrial machine systems, and provides an effective architecture that can be used to control and monitor any sort of machinery, not just packaging machines.

This article is a summary of a new architecture proposal to integrate OPC UA, Data Distribution Service (DDS) & Time Sensitive Networking (TSN). The goal is to build a coalition of vendors, consortia and standards bodies to support this approach to define and standardize the architecture to unify industry.

Around the world in factories large and small, worlds are colliding as the Modbus world, massive and pervasive, is colliding with the IoT. Modbus devices and data are not easily included in today’s HMIs, analytic systems, historians and critical applications, even though they contain important manufacturing data.

A technology enabling the embedding of Excel spreadsheets in Word documents, is enabling Industry 4.0. In the ’90s, automation companies adapted Microsoft’s object linking and embedding (better known as OLE) for their needs. The resulting Open Platform Communications (OPC) protocol later became OPC UA in 2008.