The OPC Foundation has launched a working group to specify an I/O device profile for OPC UA Field eXchange industrial devices. The device profile will allow for improved interoperability between controllers, such as PLC and DCS systems,  and remote I/O devices, including modular I/Os.

The OPC Foundation is a global consortium developing and maintaining standards for industrial automation.

Manufacturers in the process and factory automation industries are represented within this working group to ensure that I/O devices can be easily integrated into different automation systems and environments.

In order to achieve inter-vendor interoperability of I/O devices, the working group will add to the UAFX base specifications the definition of interfaces and behaviours which are typical for I/O devices. The new I/O device profile will use PubSub and can be combined with different underlying communication protocols such as UDP/IP or Raw Ethernet, and physical layers such as Ethernet-APL, to support all relevant use cases in discrete and process manufacturing, including safety I/Os based on OPC UA Safety and deterministic data exchange based on Ethernet Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), where appropriate.

“The OPC Foundation has always been at the forefront of developing standards that enable interoperability and connectivity in the industrial automation space,” said Stefan Hoppe, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation. “With the formation of this new working group, we are taking a major step forward in enabling seamless interoperability between different I/O devices and systems, which will benefit the entire industry.”

“Extending the OPC UA Framework with an I/O Device Profile is important to ensure cross-vendor interoperability and common semantics for the Controller-to-Device use cases in Factory and Process Automation, while at the same time supporting OPC UA as a fully scalable technology from the sensor across all levels to MES / ERP and also to the cloud,” stated Peter Lutz, Director FLC Initiative at OPC Foundation.