Following the official presentation at SPS IPC Drives 2018 in Nuremberg, the Field Level Communication (FLC) initiative was founded within the OPC Foundation. The initiative is responsible for establishing OPC UA and TSN at field level. Stefan Hoppe, President of the OPC Foundation, has now introduced the initiative's director, Peter Lutz, in Hanover. In his new role, Lutz will lead and drive forward the development of the initiative and the specifications.

In the course of his career, Peter Lutz has led various international projects, initiatives and consortia. In his last position as Managing Director of Sercos International, Peter Lutz was responsible for the conception, specification, standardization and marketing of the Sercos automation bus. Under his leadership, various specifications, comprehensive certification tools and procedures for conformance and interoperability testing of field devices were developed. Thomas Brandl from Bosch Rexroth and Chairman of the FLC Steering Committee is delighted with the new Director: "Peter Lutz knows how to achieve cross-manufacturer interoperability. This brings many advantages for users of the OPC Field Level Communication Standard."

The technical working groups of the FLC Steering Committee now meet regularly: for example, at the beginning of January 2019 in Munich for their kick-off meeting with over 90 participants.

O-PAS supports reference architecture on OPC UA

OPC UA is also gaining more and more followers. The Open Process Automation Forum has now also decided to rely on OPC UA. The OPAF is an international forum made up of end users, system integrators, suppliers, universities and other standardization organizations that aims to develop a standards-based, open, secure and interoperable process control architecture. Based on a common goal, OPAF members worked closely together to develop version 1.0 of the O-PAS standard, which aims to proactively unlock the potential of new data communication technology.

The OPC Foundation announced at the Hannover Messe that the O-PAS standard of the 'Open Group Open Process Automation Forum' is based on OPC UA. Stefan Hoppe comments: "The Open Group's commitment to open standards is aligned with the OPC Foundation. We will continue to work with OPAF to ensure that OPAF end users can realize the benefits of OPC UA in the best possible way."