The OPC Foundation has announced the formation of the Technical Advisory Council to ensure collaboration among competing vendors as they develop technology based on OPC's Unified Architecture standard. Such technology, which is platform- and operating-system-independent, is intended to provide a secure and reliable connection between plant floor systems and enterprise applications.
The 19-member group — composed of hardware and software vendors, as well as end users and third-party organizations — includes ABB, Emerson, Fieldbus Foundation, Honeywell, Iconics, IEC, Invensys, Kepware, Matrikon, Microsoft, OPC Foundation, OSIsoft, Rockwell, SAP, Siemens, SISCO, WBF, Wonderware, and Yokogawa.
OPC Foundation President Tom Burke told Managing Automation that the thrust behind forming the council was to expand the driving interests of Unified Architecture beyond OPC members to include stakeholders, such as end users and other standards organizations, including the Fieldbus Foundation, ISA, and IEC.
Burke said the council, which he expects to grow to include additional vendors and technology consortia, will address universal issues — including technology reliability, performance, security, and certification — that concern end users and the vendors that develop the technology that industrial automation users employ.
"The idea behind this is abandoning the notion that standards are simply the least common denominator in building products. We're all interested in one thing: making sure that the standards we provide are worth more than just the paper they're printed on," Burke said.
Burke emphasized the importance of competing vendors working together and participating actively in the development of standards and technology that address the issues of end users.
"With the OPC Foundation Technical Advisory Council, by definition, we formed an organization of visionaries whose primary purpose is to drive the vision of interoperability. The responsibility lies on their shoulders in making sure that the technology, specifications, and processes clearly provide infrastructure that is far superior to the proprietary solutions that have been offered in the past," he said.
The lack of unified standards has made enterprise-wide integration difficult for many manufacturers. Proprietary protocols and languages have hindered the plant-to-enterprise interoperability that many manufacturers have sought. The challenge is particularly vexing to small manufacturing companies, which simply don't have the financial wherewithal to hire systems integrators to tie their manufacturing facilities into enterprise applications, Burke said.
The Unified Architecture standard was released in June 2006, and Burke expects the first products based on the standard to roll out this fall. The lineup will include hardware and software products that function as data receivers for applications such as packaging, building automation, and semiconductor production, as well as associated RFID technology, Burke said.
"Unified Architecture is about providing information from the factory floor to the enterprise, but it's also about providing capabilities for highly scalable architectures [that enable manufacturers and vendors] to apply OPC standards in places they couldn't previously."
The OPC Foundation hosted a developer's conference last week that brought together vendors, end users, and product engineers to show the first of the products in development based on Unified Architecture. In addition, an October summit is scheduled for standards organizations and end users to gather to continue to work toward the adoption of interoperable technology, Burke said.