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Recruitment, Reports and Resources
News Release from: The Profibus Group
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 14 September 2001
Profibus International supports new OPC
standard
Profibus International is supporting a new OPC standard that allows data exchange between controllers from different system suppliers via industrial Ethernet TCP/IP protocol.
Profibus International is supporting a new OPC standard that allows data exchange between controllers from different system suppliers via industrial Ethernet TCP/IP protocol This new specification will enable data exchange and plant-wide configuration among different systems in a multivendor plant
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 18 Jul 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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OPC DX is application independent and is suitable for both factory and process automation.
Emerson Process Management, Rockwell Automation and Siemens are among the vendors participating in the OPC working group to develop this standard.
After final review, the specification and sample code for OPC DX will be available, planned for fourth quarter of 2001.
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The first multivendor application will be presented at Hanover Fair 2002 and at other global tradeshow venues.
Products are planned to be ready in the third quarter 2002.
Tom Burke, president of the OPC Foundation, stated that existing technologies developed around OPC standards in recent years made agreement on the DX specification much simpler to reach.
The OPC DX initiative originated after some of the largest member companies of the participating organizations broached the subject, according to Edgar Kuester, Chairman of Profibus International.
"Major manufacturers were telling us that data exchange on production lines or individual machines was becoming extremely complex because it was increasingly common to have systems from different vendors working in tandem", said Kuester.
"What they wanted was a common interface for system configuration using existing standards wherever possible.
Because of its broad acceptance in the marketplace, an OPC solution became the obvious choice".
The OPC working group was charged with creating the OPC DX specification, creating sample code and creating test-compliance code.
Once approved, the DX specification will be offered to all interested control vendors.
OPC DX provides new opportunities for PROFInet.
As an open system, PROFInet specifies procedures for run time and engineering data exchange within a PROFInet system and the underlying fieldbuses.
OPC DX provides an additional open data transfer between PROFInet and other Ethernet based communication systems.
Leading system suppliers of Profibus and PROFInet products, such as ABB, Bosch-Rexroth, Moeller and Siemens, declared their readiness to start development of products containing OPC DX functionality.
The use of an extended OPC interface to harmonise and interconnect the different protocols of the different fieldbus organisations will fit well in the industrial IT architecture.
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