ISA Expo 2003 OPC expands scope, alliances

Mark T. Hoske, editor-in-chief -- Control Engineering, 11/1/2003

Houston, TX —The OPC Foundation underlined its commitment to web services and XML at ISA Expo 2003; formed alliances with two industry groups to avoid standards duplication; and demonstrated operations and maintenance information standard interoperability among nine companies.

OPC, The Instrumentation Systems and Automation Society (ISA), and MIMOSA (an Operations and Maintenance Open Systems Alliance) announced Oct. 22 that they've formed a joint working group to collaborate more closely to ''develop interoperable open solutions spanning from the factory floor through the enterprise." Their goal is "to simplify development of interoperable operations and maintenance (O&M) systems, equipment and software" integrating with each other and with other systems in the enterprise. MIMOSA and ISA SP95 define information and process models for information flow, essentially defining the "what," while OPC defines the "how" to move the data and information, says Tom Burke, OPC's president.

Initial OpenO&M Information Standards combine strengths of the OPC and MIMOSA XML-based open standards to enable applications to properly synthesize O&M-related information in an open, multi-vendor environment. AspenTech, The DEI Group, Emerson Process Management, Iconics, Indus, OSIsoft, PdMA, Rockwell Automation, and Siemens demonstrated the OpenO&M specification at the show.

OPC technology already is the preferred method of connectivity for 78% of production management and MES applications, 75% of HMI/SCADA applications, 68% of DCS/PLC applications, and 53% of ERP/Enterprise systems level applications, according to recent studies by ARC Advisory Group.