Caspar Herzberg |
This article first appeared in the Summer 2017 issue of The Record.
Companies are increasingly looking for solutions to help bring their processes up to speed with Industry 4.0 and the industrial internet of things (IIoT). One core element of this is the connection of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT). To realise the concept of the digital factory, dynamic, real-time, secure and reliable IT and OT must come together.
Many companies want to integrate their machines not only into their existing IT systems, but also in the cloud. In order to be able to use cloud systems, companies use standard protocols for integration. In the end though, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a public cloud or a private cloud, the Microsoft Azure cloud, or a competitor’s cloud: communication must be universal.
A central challenge of Industry 4.0 and IIoT is securing standardised data and enabling the secure exchange of information between devices, machines and services from various industries. IEC62541, the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) standard, is the only mandatory communication standard required as part of the ‘Product capabilities for Industrie 4.0 Products’ criteria checklist from Zentralverband Elektrotechnik, a German association for the electrical engineering and electronics industries.
OPC UA is already being used across different markets, including oil and gas, pharmaceutical, the process industry, manufacturing, energy and building automation. The standard is also being harnessed for use with machines and devices, such as robots, vision cameras, automatic identification including radio-frequency identification (RFID) and barcode readers, programmable logic controllers and computer numerical control machines, as well as manufacturing execution systems. New areas outside automation in which the standard is being used include industrial kitchen equipment, such as coffee machines, pasta cookers and ovens.
OPC UA is the world’s largest ecosystem of industrial interoperability, and joining provides secure plug and play horizontal between devices vertically across IT – in the public cloud or the private cloud. I encourage companies to order and make use of this global standard for industrial interoperability.
This standard is ready to order and use, so why not contact your local Microsoft Azure IoT representative to get a live demo on Microsoft’s Connected Factory? The Microsoft Azure IoT team, together with OPC Foundation, is currently rolling out live device demonstrations of ‘Industrial IoT – with OPC UA to Azure IoT’ from 40 Microsoft Technology Centers worldwide. These device demonstrations include Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Gateway PC with Microsoft Azure IoT Suite; automation controllers from Rockwell, Siemens, Mitsubishi and Beckhoff; barcode readers from Leuze; RFID readers from Harting; and smart meters from Honeywell.
All of these devices are OPC UA-enabled and deliver secured telemetry data to Microsoft Azure. From the IT and cloud side, with command and control you can take remedial actions to ensure you keep your operation running efficiently. Some of these devices also communicate horizontally with each other, such as Beckhoff’s controller, which signals via different blink patterns the results of barcode readings from Leuze’s device for example.
Preconfigured solutions for the Azure IoT Suite are engineered to help businesses get started quickly with internet of things (IoT) solutions and move from proof-of-concept to broader deployment.
At Hannover Messe 2017, Microsoft released an OPC UA-based cloud solution for industry – Azure IoT Suite Connected Factory. This preconfigured solution connects Microsoft Azure to devices that work with OPC UA and OPC Classic specifications. It also enables companies to securely connect their own machines and devices via the cloud and control them securely and centrally, capturing machine data without losing the semantic description of the machines.
The solution also leverages Microsoft Azure services, including Azure IoT Hub and the new Azure Time Series Insights. Furthermore, it provides a rich web portal with OPC UA server management capabilities, alarms processing and telemetry visualisations. The web portal and the Azure Time Series Insights can be used to quickly see trends in OPC UA telemetry data and see overall equipment effectiveness and several key performance indicators. These include the number of units produced and energy consumption, and enables customers to gain insights on previously unavailable data to help drive efficiencies in their business.
A demonstration of the Connected Factory can be found on the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite website, and users with a Microsoft Azure subscription can try the solution today.
In parallel with the release of the Azure IoT Suite Connected Factory, Microsoft has released a six-step framework to help customers on their path to digitisation. This framework utilises the Connected Factory to assist them on this journey, and can also be found on the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite website.
Microsoft has also partnered with various industry leaders in the OPC UA ecosystem to provide turnkey gateways for this solution, including Softing, Unified Automation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Kepware and Cisco.
Stefan Hoppe is global vice president of OPC Foundation