Cooperation to speed up Field Level Communications (FLC) initiative backed by proven technologies from established organizations
Scottsdale, AZ – June 25th, 2020 – The OPC Foundation, ODVA and Sercos International are pleased to announce a collaboration to develop a new generation of a best-in-class motion technology for industry. This new motion technology will be initially published as OPC UA Motion, with subsequent updates to the Sercos technology and the CIP Motion technology for EtherNet/IP. This development will provide a flexible architecture for distributing motion control features between controllers and drives, based on a common information model for motion devices, such as PLCs / motion controllers, standard drives / frequency converters, positioning drives, servo drives, motion encoders, motor starters, and power supplies.
To begin the work, a new OPC UA Motion Working Group (WG) was launched on May 18th. The new Motion WG is tasked with specifying the motion facet of FLC to enable inter-vendor operation for motion automation. Many well-known industrial automation manufacturers in the field of motion control are represented within this WG to ensure a uniform, worldwide, and coordinated standard for motion automation in discrete and process manufacturing. This new motion specification will use PubSub, with and without TSN network access, and can be combined with OPC UA Safety to support all relevant use cases for centralized and non-centralized motion solution concepts.
“OPC UA Motion is an important extension to the OPC UA Framework, ensuring – in combination with OPC UA Safety, Deterministic Communication and Ethernet-APL/SPE – semantic interoperability, not only for the Controller-to-Controller and Controller-to-Device use cases in Factory and Process Automation, but also supporting OPC UA as a fully scalable technology from the sensor across all levels to MES / ERP and also to the cloud,” stated Peter Lutz, Director FLC Initiative at OPC Foundation.
In order to provide end users with a best in class solution, the FLC Initiative selected motion solutions backed by proven technologies from established organizations: as a result, CIP MotionTM and Sercos specifications have been determined to be ideal solutions on which to base OPC UA Motion. In turn, ODVA and Sercos International are committed to building upon their existing collaborations with the OPC Foundation and to providing end users of their technologies, EtherNet/IPTM and Sercos, with an expanded solution set as well as improved motion technology. The CIP Motion and Sercos specifications will be used and may be changed or extended for:
- Adaptation to OPC UA & FLC system architecture
- Innovation to cover Industrie 4.0 and digitalization use cases
- Modern concepts of data modelling and real time requirements
The FLC Initiative – with their Architecture & Infrastructure (A&I) WG and Safety WG – guarantees to deliver a harmonized solution for motion automation applications including safe motion functionality. In addition, cooperation is planned with the existing VDMA/OPC Foundation joint WG for electrical power train systems.
“The work between ODVA and the OPC Foundation on OPC UA Motion and the OPC UA Companion Specification for CIP will ensure that vendors and end users can take advantage of best-in-class device, cloud, and enterprise level services in both the machine automation and process industries with EtherNet/IP and OPC UA,” stated Dr. Al Beydoun, President and Executive Director of ODVA. “CIP Motion is a proven technology providing value for users of EtherNet/IP, and ODVA is delighted that the FLC initiative has decided to use CIP Motion profiles as a basis to support the goal of harmonized application of TSN in future motion profiles. This will benefit users of EtherNet/IP, as well as users throughout industry, with lower investment and deployment efforts.”
“Sercos International is very pleased to support the creation of a new harmonized motion profile under the auspices of the OPC Foundation. The utilization of the long standing and proven Sercos drive profiles will contribute to a broad acceptance of OPC UA Motion by users and suppliers in the wide range of motion applications ,” stated Klaus Weyer, managing director of Sercos International.
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 for moving data and information from the embedded world to the enterprise cloud. The Foundation serves over 750 members worldwide in the Industrial Automation, IT, IoT, IIoT, M2M, Industrie 4.0, Building Automation, machine tools, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, and Smart Energy sectors. For more information about the OPC Foundation, please visit www.opcfoundation.org.
About ODVA
ODVA is an international standards development and trade organization with members from the world’s leading automation suppliers. ODVA’s mission is to advance open, interoperable information and communication technologies for industrial automation. Its standards include the Common Industrial Protocol or “CIP™,” ODVA’s media independent network protocol – and the network adaptations of CIP– EtherNet/IP, DeviceNet, CompoNet™ and ControlNet™. For interoperability of production systems and their integration with other systems, ODVA embraces the adoption of commercial-off-the-shelf, standard Internet and Ethernet technologies as a guiding principle. This principle is exemplified by EtherNet/IP – one of the world’s leading industrial Ethernet networks. Visit ODVA on-line at www.odva.org.
About Sercos International
Sercos International is an association of users and manufacturers that is in charge of technical development, standardization, certification, and marketing for the Sercos automation bus. Conformance tests guarantee that Sercos implementations are standard-compliant ensuring that devices from different manufacturers can be combined. Based in Germany, the organization presently has more than 90 member companies located around the world and has national liaison offices in North America and Asia. Visit Sercos at www.sercos.org
For more information, contact:
Peter Lutz
Director Field Level Communications
peter.lutz@opcfoundation.org
+49 (7162) 9445299
Steve Fales
ODVA Headquarters
sfales@odva.org
+1(734)975-8840
Klaus Weyer
Managing Director
k.weyer@sercos.de
+49 (170) 9341884
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