The Catena-X Automotive Network e. V. and the OPC Foundation have announced a cooperation aimed at promoting the use of interoperable data models and standards in the manufacturing industry. Both organizations are responding to the EU regulation on the Digital Product Passport (DPP), which stipulates that trustworthy, machine-readable product data must be made available along the entire value chain from 2027.

Catena-X is the first open, collaborative data room initiative for the automotive industry. It enables companies along the supply chain to exchange data in a sovereign, standardized way based on interoperable infrastructures and semantic templates. With OPC UA, the OPC Foundation is responsible for the globally recognized standard for secure and semantically enriched information exchange in the industry.

The partners intend to work together in four key areas:

• Semantic Integration: Combine the OPC UA information modelling and Catena-X semantic templates to create the most comprehensive repository of interoperable, machine-readable models. This technology backbone will also support automated DPP generation from production data. 

• Open-Source Reference Implementations: Jointly develop and provide open-source reference implementations for key dataspace and interoperability components, enabling straightforward integration of OPC UA-based systems into the Catena-X data ecosystem. 

• Reference Architecture Alignment: Align the OPC Foundation’s Cloud Initiative reference architecture with Catena-X’s dataspace architecture to enable streamlined deployment from the shopfloor to the supply chain. 

• Industrial Ecosystem Enablement: Empower companies to leverage their existing OPC UA tools and infrastructure to meet emerging regulatory requirements, particularly the DPP, while reducing integration costs and accelerating time-to-compliance. 

“The OPC Foundation provides rich, secure, and proven access to standardized information - an essential foundation for digital transformation. By linking this data to the Catena-X ecosystem, we turn standardized information into cross-company value. This collaboration benefits both ecosystems and marks a key step toward end-to-end data chains, at scale, and cross-industry solutions, like the Digital Product Passport.”, says Oliver Ganser, Chairman of the Board at Catena-X. 

Stefan Hoppe, President and Executive Director of OPC Foundation, continued "This collaboration brings together two strong ecosystems: OPC UA, as a globally accepted standard for industrial interoperability, and Catena-X, as a pioneering data-space initiative for the automotive industry. The combination of proven standardization and sovereign data exchange provides companies with a practical bridge from the shopfloor to the cloud. Catena-X contributes significant added value—particularly in meeting regulatory requirements such as the Digital Product Passport and enabling cross-company use of data models, which is also a key pillar of the OPC Foundation’s Cloud Initiative. Together, we are building a robust foundation for sustainable and efficient digitalization."

The white paper on the cooperation is available for download here: