The Digital Twin Consortium (DTC) and the OPC Foundation have partnered to accelerate the development and adoption of digital twin-enabling technologies.

The DTC and the OPC Foundation have worked closely in several open-source reference implementation projects on GitHub and have agreed to collaborate even closer.

“We are excited about working with OPC Foundation,” said Dan Isaacs, CTO of DTC. “Through our collaboration, we will influence interoperability standards and processes that will advance the use of digital twins in manufacturing across many industries.”

They will collaborate on standardisation requirements, realising interoperability by harmonising technology components and other elements.

Aligning work in horizontal domains for adoption in vertical domains and use cases, proof of concepts, and value innovation platform programmes, will include: technology, terminology and taxonomy; security and trustworthiness; conceptual, informational, structural and behavioural models; enabling technologies such as simulation and AI; technology stack across the digital twin lifecycle; and case study development.

They aim to develop and understand open-source reference implementations.

“The OPC Foundation maintains the global standard for secure industrial interoperability for information modelling and data exchange, which, as part of this relationship with DTC, benefits all who wish to create semantically identical digital twins,” said Stefan Hoppe, president of the OPC Foundation. “Our involvement to liaise with DTC further strengthens the user’s ability to model each data aspect quickly and precisely, creating and interacting with any digital twin. Digital twins will be fully compatible with the OPC UA framework used in the run-time components within the operational domain.”

Microsoft is a contributor to the DTC’s open-source programme.

“Microsoft saw the rising demand for open digital twin technology and industrial interoperability standards like OPC UA,” said Erich Barnstedt, chief architect for standards, consortia and industrial IoT at Microsoft. “The collaboration of OPC Foundation and DTC will continue to elevate the impact of digital twin technologies. These two organisations have already started collaborating on open-source projects and these projects will expand to include emerging technologies.”

Both consortia will exchange information through regular consultations, joint contributor relations, seminars, open-source projects and other activities.

Since 1996, the OPC Foundation has facilitated the development and adoption of the OPC information exchange standards. As advocate and custodian of these specifications, the foundation’s mission is to help industry vendors, end-users and software developers maintain interoperability in their manufacturing and automation assets.

The DTC coalesces industry, government and academia to drive consistency in vocabulary, architecture, security and interoperability of digital twin technology. It advances digital twin technology in many industries, from aerospace to natural resources. It is a programme of the Object Management Group.