As the tough economic times continue in North America, we are hearing more on how it is impacting Industrial Automation, such as layoffs like Gary Mintchell blogged on.  It seems inevitable that events around the manufacturing and business industries will affect all others.  The ripple affects are also being felt around the world.  Even resource rich areas of the world like the Middle East are feeling the crunch.  Take for example a few blurbs from a recent article in the LA Times:  “Arab summit in Qatar overshadowed by economic crisis”

“The global economic crisis is set to plunge a Middle East already reeling from war and extremism into further chaos..”

“The French energy giant Total S.A. predicts global demand for oil will drop by 2 million barrels a day.”

“Qatar’s ruler warns that Middle East, with its location and resources, is particularly vulnerable to the effects of the global downturn.”

Ouch.  Things are getting tougher all over when this part of the world is worrying about money.  Now businesses that may not have had to think much about optimization and cost savings are looking for ways to save. More than ever the benefits of standardized communications that OPC provides are looking more attractive.  Things such as to providing multi-vendor plug-and-play components that manufacturing customers and system integrators can easily integrate. OPC also delivers other business benefits like increased flexibility, and reduced system integration, development and installation costs of factory automation and process control systems.

If you haven’t looked at OPC to save you money before, it’s not too late to start now.

OPC Technology Helps Maximize Return on Process Historian Assets

How to Save One Million Dollars with OPC

OPC Architectures in Oil & Gas

One of the presentations at the MatrikonOPC User Group on April 16, 2009 in Houston will be a multi-vendor demonstration of OPCUA-based products. In addition to showing new OPC UA functionality, the demonstration will also showcase how legacy-based products fit right in to the OPC UA-based technology, through the OPC generic wrapper and/or services offered by the MatrikonOPC products.

If you haven’t registered for the OPC User Group yet, there is still time.  It’s shaping up to be an impressive lineup, with speaker topics such as “Collective Intelligence Down to the Machine Level” and “Extending the Value of Your OPC-HDA Data from the Production Line to the Bottom Line”.  There will also be presentations on Security topics from Jason Holcomb of Digital Bond and Rick Kaun, Matrikon’s Director of Network Security Solutions.  Michael Toecker of Burns & McDonnell Engineering will be talking about Compliance & Infrastructure Protection, and Tom Burke will be chatting about OPC UA.  All in all, a full day of OPC fun!

If you’re looking to fill in some background information on OPC UA, Security or Compliance topics before the conference, here are some titles that might be of interest:

OPC Security Better Safe than Sorry

OPC UA Security: Do You Have Reservations?

Complacent with Compliance?

OPC UA – How Deep Does Interface Standardization Go?

…Or Afternoon or Evening or Night.  Whenever and wherever you are reading this, anytime on or around St Patrick’s Day is a good time for Irish salutations and libations (like a Guinness or Murphy’s of course). In the spirit of the day, here’s an Irish toast to live by… 

May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been,

The foresight to know where you are going,

And the insight to know when you have gone too far.

To best apply that to OPC, you might want to read about reducing risk in complex OPC projects J.   

May your St Patrick’s Day be safe and happy and may the Guinness flow free. Speaking of free… For those that haven’t heard, MatrikonOPC now offers a free OPC HDA Explorer test client.  Feel free to try it out (preferably before the free flowing Guinness).

Beannachtam na Feile Padraig!

Well we are talking peanuts, in particular the deadly salmonella outbreak traced to a Georgia peanut processing plant early this year. According to the Associated Press, the effects of the widespread peanut butter recall could cost rural America’s peanut producers $1 billion in lost production and sales.  That’s far from peanuts, particularly in the current economic climate.  What do peanuts have to do with OPC?  I’m glad you asked, since ensuring safety and quality control of food and beverage facilities hinges system traceability and accurate real-time data. 

Any food product requires some type of tested and approved raw materials.  Once raw materials have entered the factory’s internal supply chain, critical control points are required to minimize the risk and scope of any product recall that might result from the raw materials.(like peanuts in a chocolate bar). These controls consist of identifying, auditing and tracking raw and work-in-progress materials as they pass through each processing points. Tracking material movements through the manufacturing control points at a discrete level provides benefits like:

·          Raw materials and WIP items are identified and tracked at each processing point and identified as a unique batch.

·          WIP items can be tracked as they move from process to process or as they are re-blended in the manufacturing process.

Traceability and auditing of these critical control points and product movement by using accurate data capture, provides real-time measurement of quality standards. These measurements may even mean substandard or contaminated materials can be caught before entering the finished goods or distribution stream. In any case, if a company knows exactly what went where, then the scope of a product recall can be accurately determined and followed up on.

Of course OPC can help provide this access to real time data, particularly since often manufacturing equipment is specialized and may have proprietary interfaces. You can read how OPC helped the Stretch Island Fruit Plant or check out how OPC can be used to tie into other system databases.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about OPC HDA this week, as there are a few on the OPC Foundation forums.  Maybe it has to do with the OPC Interoperability conference going on right now, or maybe people are working on the OPC UA servers.  In any case, if you have a HDA question you’re looking to get answered drop me a line.

If you’re looking for a HDA test client, check out the new MatrikonOPC HDA Explorer.  Our developers have been using it as an internal test tool for years, and it’s been finally given a user-friendly overhaul.  Check it out.

Everyone is looking for ways to optimize and save money in these tough economic times, so using standards like OPC makes even more sense (or cents for that matter).  There’s an OPC Foundation article on this topic posted over at AutomatedBuildings.com that focuses on OPC in building automation.  The home and building industry uses a lot of protocols, like BACNet and Johnson Controls N2.  Using OPC to tie these devices to building management systems can lead to a lot of savings.

If the ‘green’ movement isn’t enough reason for more building automation vendors to leverage OPC standards, may be the economic crunch will be.  Those wanting more information on using OPC with building automation can check out these papers:  If These Walls Could Talk or Integrating OPC into Building Automation.