eBooks

OPC UA Users and Experts – Conveying Knowledge and Experience

With the eBook editions, the OPC Foundation continues to interview industry experts and market leaders on the benefits and potential of OPC UA technology for end users, system integrators and operators in the world of Industrial IoT.

Download the ebook editions to learn more about Companion Specifications, the importance of OPC UA for business software, protecting against hacker/malware attacks, how to get started with OPC UA, and more.

 

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Download v6 here

 Chapter 1: OPC Foundation Report of the Americas
Michael Clark, Director OPC Foundation North America, shares a regional update of year-to-date activities in the Americas, outlining adoption and application of OPC technologies in various sectors

Chapter 2: Miele Optimizes Appliance Production with OPC UA
Christian Stickling, Information Technology in Appliance at Miele, explains how the world’s leading supplier of premium domestic appliances has optimized the production of washing machines by implementing OPC UA technologies.

Chapter 3: OPC UA and the PA-DIM Specification
Frank Fengler, of ABB, provides an overview of the Process Automation – Device Information Model (PA-DIM) Specification and the role OPC UA plays in this initiative.

Chapter 4: OPC UA and Ethernet-APL
Andreas Hennecke of Pepperl+Fuchs provides an introduction into process plants going digital. He talks about robust communication and its implications for technicians and introduces the Ethernet-APL Standard and how it relates to OPC UA.

Chapter 5: OPC Legal Topics
Brad Biddle, Outside General Counsel to the OPC Foundation, explains some of the rules behind the development of standards while adhering to antitrust or competition law. Brad expounds on patent licensing, intellectual property rights, the differences between open-source and open standards, and gives guidance on how contributors are best governed during and after these development phases.

Chapter 6: OPC UA and Artificial Intelligence
Peter Seeberg, of asimovero.AI, describes the correlation between Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Algorithms. He balances the benefits, and even potential threats, posed by AI. Peter further explains how the information modelling of OPC UA is an accelerator to launching industrial applications of AI.

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Download v5 here

 5th Edition OPC Technology eBook

CHAPTER 1: THE RENAULT SUCCESS STORY
OPC UA capabilities and efficiencies have launched Groupe Renault into the digital era, facilitating data analytics and AI abilities in partnership with Google Cloud Platform. As a result, Groupe Renault is now reducing failure rates in all production components.

CHAPTER 2: THE STATUS AND FUTURE OF OPC IN KOREA
Digitalization is a prevailing requirement throughout Korea’s industrial markets, and OPC UA has
emerged as a key technology of interest in Korea, especially throughout the manufacturing industries, including casting, molding, plastics processing, welding, surface treatments, heat treating, and soon.

CHAPTER 3: OPC UA FOR MACHINE TOOLS COMPANION SPECIFICATION
Andreas Wohlfeld of Trumpf and Götz Görisch of VDW describe the excellent and timely efforts that have gone into the OPC UA for Machine Tools Companion Specification. Through collaboration between this working group and the Harmonization working group, they outline the relationships that are building with other working groups, based on the foundation that the machine tool companion spec has produced.

CHAPTER 4: 2021 YEAR IN REVIEW AND PLANS FOR 2022
Stefan Hoppe, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation shares the successes and achievements that the OPC Foundation has had with its partners and collaborators over the past year. He also discusses plans for the coming year and shares personal insights on market trends.

 

 

Download v4 here

 4th Edition OPC Technology eBook

CHAPTER 1: THE STATUS AND FUTURE OF OPC UA IN CHINA
Albert Zhang provides an update on the current status of the OPC Foundation‘s activities in various regions around China, highlights the adoption of the OPC UA specification as a Chinese national standard, and shares the status and preparations for the „Made in China 2025“ activities.

CHAPTER 2: EQUINOR OPC UA USE CASE
Steffan Sørenes of Equinor shares Equinor’s OPC UA use case, explaining how they implemented and scaled-up OPC UA, the benefits Equinor is achieving, the open-source information model library they’ve shared with the world, and Equinor’s roadmap going forward.

CHAPTER 3: OPC UA FX (FIELD EXCHANGE) SPECIFICATION EXTENSIONS
interview with Clark Case of Rockwell Automation and Georg Beeler from Siemens sharing the current status and future road map of the OPC UA FX Specification, an initiative of the Field Level Communications (FLC) initiative including achievements, the creative process, the parties
involved, and the background and features of the UAFX Standard.

CHAPTER 4: OPC UA SUPPORTING FIELD EXCHANGE (FX) INCLUDING TSN AND APL
The Field Level Communications (FLC) Initiative of the OPC Foundation has completed the initial Release Candidate for OPC UA-based Field Exchange (UAFX) for the use case “controller-to-controller”. This important milestone establishes OPC UA as the standardized industrial interoperability solution at the field level, taking advantage of key technologies.

CHAPTER 5: FUNCTIONAL SAFETY
Interview with Max Walter from Siemens, in his role as the chairperson of the OPC UA Safety working group. Max provides a quick introduction into functional safety, how OPC UA deals with safety, discuss example use cases, talk about key features, prerequisites, certification, and how OPC UA Safety will become the one and only safety protocol.

CHAPTER 6: GETTING OPC UA PRODUCTS CERTIFIED
Interview with Alexander Allmendinger from the OPC Foundation, outlining the process of getting OPC UA products certified. Further explanation of the certification process, the preparation, how to reach compliance, the testing itself, what is being tested, how to get started, and the tools available to support developers and end users

 

3rd Edition OPC Technology eBook – download here

  • Welcome: OPC UA, MQTT, AND INFORMATION INTEROPERABILITY
    by Randy Armstrong and Michael Clark
  • CHAPTER 1: OPC UA: THE PAST AND THE FUTURE
    Learn from an interview with Jim Luth who is a System Architect in Process Automation R&D at Schneider Electric and is the CTO of the OPC Foundation. He will discuss the past and the  future of OPC UA and his role as OPC Foundation CTO. We’ll have conversations about OPC UA revisions and versioning, about MQTT, about big-data, and where he sees OPC UA becoming adopted.
  • CHAPTER 2: OPC UA SECURITY
    Learn from an interview with Randy Armstrong, Chief Software Architect at Sparhawk Software and Director, IT Operations. He is also Chair of the OPC UA Security Working Group. He will discuss the duties of the Security Working Group and why it was created, the companies involved, and the process of handling security vulnerabilities.
  • CHAPTER 3: COMMERCIAL KITCHEN EQUIPMENT
    Learn from an interview with Fabian Anzmann and Holger Burgtorf about the OPC UA Companion Specification for Commercial Kitchen Equipment.
    They will tell us about the Industrial Association of House, Heating, and Kitchen technology, and what the company, Küppersbusch, does. They will also give us an introduction to commercial kitchens and explain what role the Internet of Things may play in the concept of the connected kitchen.
  • CHAPTER 4: AUTOID COMPANION SPECIFICATION
    Learn from an interview with Olaf Wilmsmeier from Wilmsmeier Solutions and Peter Altes from AIM about the OPC UA Companion Specification for AutoID Devices. They will introduce the AIM organization, identify the role of AutoID in the context of Industrial IoT, why they chose OPC UA as their basis, and the status and synergies between wireless sensor networks and AutoID.
  • CHAPTER 5: OPC UA USE CASES
    Learn from an interview with Christopher Anhalt of Softing about markets, adoption drivers, competing standards, the horizontal and vertical integration of IT and OT, companion specification use cases, greenfield and brown-field… and many other things relevant to use cases that have made OPC UA so successful.

 

 

2nd Edition OPC Technology eBook – download here

  • WELCOME by Stefan Hoppe, President OPC Foundation
  • CHAPTER 1: COMPANION SPECIFICATIONS
    Karl Deiretsbacher of the OPC Foundation shares his knowledge about Companion Specifications. Learn about the different types of Companion Specifications that exist, what Joint Working Groups are, and how the OPC Foundation guides the development and maintenance of Companion Specifications.
  • CHAPTER 2: SAP BUSINESS SOFTWARE
    Learn from an interview with Veronika Schmid-Lutz and Rüdiger Fritz from SAP about the importance of OPC UA for business software. They will tell us what value SAP sees in OPC UA and will describe the concept of business-context-driven control loops and the benefit of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) on the shop floor.
  • CHAPTER 3: GETTING STARTED WITH OPC UA
    Learn from an interview with Jouni Aro of Prosys OPC how developers and end users alike can get started using OPC UA. Jouni shares information about off-the-shelf products, software development toolkits, open source options, training and support, as well as product certification.
  • CHAPTER 4: OPC UA AND SECURITY
    Learn from an interview with Darek Kominek of Matrikon about the concepts of built-in security, the IT-OT gap, protecting against hacker/malware attacks, and many other features that have made OPC UA the secure data-exchange standard it is today.
  • CHAPTER 5: OPC UA OPC CERTIFICATION PRINCIPLES
    Learn from an interview with Paul Hunkar from the OPC Foundation about certification. He will give us a quick introduction into certification, why certification is important, the end-user and vendor demand for certification, the costs involved, and who can get products certified.
  • CHAPTER 6: IBM APP CONNECT FOR MANUFACTURING
    Learn from an interview with Mithun Katti and Joerg Wende of IBM about OT/IT Integration, specifically, App Connect for Manufacturing. They will talk about IBM Industry 4.0 solutions, their Plant Service Bus, and the role OPC UA plays in the IBM reference architecture for manufacturing.

 

 

1st Edition OPC Technology eBook – download here

  • WELCOME by Mike Clark, Director North America OPC Foundation
  • OPC UA FOR OPEN PROCESS AUTOMATION by Don Bartusiak
  • WHAT IS OPC? by Stefan Hoppe
  • THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND OPC UA by Uwe Steinkraus
  • THE FLC INITIATIVE OF THE OPC FOUNDATION by Peter Lutz
  • VDMA COMPANION SPECIFICATIONS by Andreas Faath
  • OPEN SERIALIZATION COMMUNICATION STANDARD by Marcel de Grutter
  • MICROSOFT OPC UA CLOUD SOLUTIONS by Erich Barnstedt
  • SMART FACTORY WEB by Thomas Usländer