For Immediate Release
OPC Foundation Elects Schmid-Lutz of SAP to Board
Scottsdale, AZ – April 14, 2015 – Veronika Schmid-Lutz, Chief Product Owner for manufacturing products at SAP SE, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the OPC Foundation. SAP was an early supporter of OPC UA and integrated the standard into its Manufacturing Execution Suite (MES) products in 2008.
The election of Schmid-Lutz expands the number of OPC Foundation board members. It also reflects the importance of SAP, one of the world’s leading IT companies, and of the role information technology is playing in extending OPC UA as the accepted standard for Internet of Things (IoT) communications. OPC UA is considered the one and only communication technology for the Industrie 4.0 initiative.
“Manufacturing in the digital world requires a highly connected and intelligent approach that is responsive to individual customer demands,” said Schmid-Lutz. “It’s the foundation for enabling flexible manufacturing processes and to fully empower production workers. In order to achieve this, SAP is using and supporting standards like OPC UA to ensure simple, scalable and safe information exchange with the shop floor.”
Thomas J. Burke, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation, pointed out that “the OPC Foundation Board of Directors is representative of the world’s most prominent global industrial automation suppliers. Their commitment and dedication as board members, as well as their contributions to OPC technology, are a major reason for the success of the OPC Foundation.
“SAP is well recognized in our industry and has been actively participating in many OPC Foundation-sanctioned events, presenting a great success story showing the information integration of data from smart meters to the enterprise,” added Burke. “Customers benefit from the easy, direct and secured communications that OPC UA enables, from PLC controllers on the shop floor to the top floor world of IT.”
Ms. Schmid-Lutz, who is located in Walldorf, Germany, joined SAP in 1995 as a developer in manufacturing and contributed to several applications in ERP Production Planning (PP) and Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO). After leading various development organizations within SAP, she took over the role of Director, Solutions Management and Development Industry Business Unit Mill Products in 2004. In 2009 she assumed the role of head of delivery management manufacturing.
She was responsible for the successful delivery of many manufacturing products and was appointed Chief Product Owner for manufacturing in 2011. She has overall accountability for the success, quality, cost management and delivery of SAP manufacturing products.
In addition to Ms. Schmid-Lutz and Burke, the OPC Foundation Board includes Russ Agrusa, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ICONICS; Matthias Damm, President of Ascolab; Stefan Hoppe of Beckhoff Automation, who is President of OPC Europe and also serves as Vice President of the OPC Foundation; Thomas Hahn, Chief Software Expert at Siemens AG; Nobuaki Konishi, Vice President of Industrial Automation Systems Business Division at Yokogawa Electric Corporation; and Ziad Kaakani, Global System Engineering and Architecture, Honeywell Process Solutions.
About The OPC Foundation
Since 1996, the OPC Foundation has facilitated the development and adoption of the OPC information exchange standards. As both advocate and custodian of these specifications, the Foundation’s mission is to help industry vendors, end-users, and software developers maintain interoperability in their manufacturing and automation assets. The OPC Foundation is dedicated to providing the best specifications, technology, process and certification to achieve multivendor, multiplatform, secure, reliable interoperability in industrial automation and related domains. The organization serves over 440 members worldwide in the Industrial Automation, IT, IoT, Building Automation, Oil & Gas and Smart Energy sectors. For more information about the OPC Foundation, please visit https://opcfoundation.org.
For more information, contact:
Thomas J. Burke, President
OPC Foundation
330-357-8012
Thomas.burke@opcfoundation.org
