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Machinery Building Blocks

Working Groups > Machinery Building Blocks

Scope / Goals

Currently, around 40 working groups in the VDMA are working on OPC UA Companion Specifications, and more than 600 companies in the industry are involved in the creation process.
OPC UA for Machinery Building Blocks is a central harmonization effort for joint working groups with VDMA. It is a basic specification for the entire mechanical and plant engineering industry. On the one hand, it is to be used as a basis for existing and emerging companion specifications. On the other hand, machinery or equipment in mechanical engineering can use the contents of the specification if there is not yet a standardized OPC UA interface in their own industry.

Harmonized Interfaces based on OPC UA for Machinery

The intention of the working group is not to define one information model, but continuously work on generalized concepts in the area of machinery in order to harmonize the usage of OPC UA in the context of the mechanical engineering industry.
Here, “machine” means any piece of equipment that converts energy (e.g., electricity, steam, gas, human power, pressure) to mechanical movements, heat, electrical signals, pressure etc. to do a particular job in an industrial scenario.

Technical Content / Use Cases

OPC 40001 – UA for Machinery is applicable for the entire machine building industry. It is divided into several parts describing different building blocks for use cases across different types of machines and machine components. Selected building blocks can either be used by other OPC UA Companion Specifications or used independently of other standards.

Covered Building Blocks
The already published building blocks are as follows:

Machine identification (OPC 40001-1)
This building block describes the identification data of a machine. The intention is to ensure the unique identification of a machine. Typical data of this can be the serial number, the manufacturer or the year of production.
Component Identification (OPC 40001-1)
This building block is used to identify (machine) components. In terms of content, there are many overlaps with machine identification. However, no unique identification of each individual component is required here.
Listing of Machinery Items (OPC 40001-1)
This building block simplifies browsing through an aggregating OPC UA server. The added value arises as soon as several machines are connected or a machine is composed of several identifiable components. All connected machines are displayed in a folder and all components of a machine are displayed in a corresponding component folder below the machine.
Machinery State (OPC 40001-1)
A clear added value can be achieved with the Machinery State building block. Here, a mechanism is provided across the entire machine and plant construction to reflect the current status of the machine. This makes it uniformly clear whether the machine is currently producing, at a standstill or performing another activity, such as cleaning or setup. This greatly simplifies the subsequent implementation of production monitoring or the calculation of availability key performance indicators. The model can be extended to suit specific industries and can be used for both machines and components.
Counters (OPC 40001-1)
With this addition, the implementation of the use case Preventive Maintenance is supported by the new building blocks “Operation Counter” and “Lifetime Counter”. The “Operation Counter” module gives the user the possibility to display information about the usage time and usage frequency of a machine or machine component. The “Lifetime Counter” module enables the user to display the life cycle stage of the machine or machine component.
Process Values (OPC 40001-2)
This Companion Specification describes another building block of OPC UA for Machinery. This module enables process values, setpoints and limit values to be represented together via OPC UA. The model thus allows analog sensor signals, as well as simulated values, to be provided with an application-related context. This context can be used for better visualizations in user interfaces by reading out and displaying critical value ranges of a sensor directly via OPC UA. At the same time, process monitoring can be mapped via alarm mechanisms, so that operators and plant owners are automatically informed about critical values.
Job Management (OPC 40001-3)
Here, a general management of machine orders is described. This ranges from metadata around the job to the mechanisms how jobs are started, paused or stopped, for example. There are already domain-specific solutions for this use case, which will now be considered for the cross-industry solution in OPC UA for Machinery and brought in accordingly. The model will be based on the ISA 95 Job Control Specification.
Energy Management (OPC 40001-4)
This building block enables standardized access to energy consumption information for machines and their components. It is based on the generic specification OPC 34100 – Energy Consumption Management, developed jointly by PI, ODVA, the OPC Foundation, and VDMA. The model provides a predefined set of typical and market-relevant energy data points, making it easier for users to retrieve and interpret consumption values across different machine types and vendors.
Result Transfer (OPC 40001-101)
The Result Transfer building block is intended for test and inspection equipment that typically creates and sends a type of test report. Thus, this Building Block is rather specialized and not as generically applicable as the other already published Building Blocks. It can be used, for example, in the field of industrial image processing, textile test equipment or coordinate measuring machines.

There are more topics that will be started in the future. These are defined via the roadmap, which is dynamically adapted to the needs of the domain-specific working groups. Some examples are:

Tool Management
Skills & Capabilities
Operating Resource Management
…

UA for Machinery can be used across the entire landscape of production machinery, either standalone or in combination with domain-specific specifications.