The recent posting from Jim Cahill, is one I can relate too.   I can think of few better aims in life than to produce a better tasting beer.  I’m pretty sure it’s every Chemical Engineers dream job to end up at a brewery (personally I’d love to be working at the Gulf Islands Brewery on Salt Spring Island, BC.   If you’ve ever been there you’d know why).    Breweries are not usually top of the list when you think about industries using OPC, but it does have it’s uses here too.   I know we’ve supplied OPC servers and products to companies like Anheuser-Busch and Molson Breweries.  (Personally, I’m more inclined to a Guinness or three.  Must be the Murphy in me.)

Brewing is primarily a batch process, and traditionally OPC has not played a major role in batch type operations.  There is an OPC Batch specification, that is basically a companion spec to OPC Data Access 2.0, but this has had fairly limited adoption in the market place.   The main reason is, people tend to see OPC DA and HDA as time based, where batch operations are more event or transaction based.   That’s not to say OPC can’t or is not used in batch processes.  In fact I’ve seen some very good batch applications that leverage OPC.   Even though the process may be batch based, the measurements like temperatures, pressures, oxygen sensor readings, etc are often stored in a Desktop or Enterprise historian.  The ‘batch’ type information such as recipes, batch identifiers, line ups, etc is often stored in a relational database.  Controlling the batch is done using read/write commands via the OPC DA interface.   Batch reporting, trending, analysis against ‘the Golden Batch’, etc are performed using OPC HDA.  The batch application or ERP system would only require the OPC DA/HDA interfaces since there are OPC HDA servers available for every relational database.

Combining the storage capabilities of an OPC based real-time historian, the correlation power of relational database and OPC HDA you get yourself a very flexible and capable basis for a batch application platform.   I’ve been in plants using variations on this theme for chemical batch production, tracking rolls on paper machines and steel manufacturing.   If someone is looking to implement this in a brewery, I’m always available for OPC consulting and taste testing