The collaboration between the ODVA (Open DeviceNet Vendors Association) and the OPC Foundation should lead to reliable and secure communication between devices that are part of a CIP-capable industrial control system and other OPC UA-capable applications. Communication between CIP devices and OPC UA devices as well as with cloud services and enterprise software should be possible. General tasks required for the management of cloud gateway devices will be defined; CIP devices will have unrestricted access to important cloud services. "The transfer of process and control data from EtherNet/IP devices to OPC UA servers will enable valuable information from the factory floor to be made available at the edge and beyond - including in the cloud - for enterprise-wide analysis," explains Dr. Al Beydoun, President and Executive Director of ODVA.

The OPC UA Companion Specification will map CIP objects to the corresponding OPC UA information models and profiles - and vice versa. Data transfer to and from the cloud and from EtherNet/IP to OPC UA is made possible by the CIP devices providing useful information such as discovery, identity, diagnostics, status and parameters. The fact that critical process data can be easily transferred from EtherNet/IP to OPC UA will significantly reduce the effort required to access higher-level systems such as analytics, ERP or MES. The OPC UA Companion Specification will ensure that the data is available to business and IT systems in the right form for rapid trend analysis and insight generation.

A joint working group made up of members of the ODVA and the OPC Foundation will work on identifying critical device-to-cloud use cases, such as the feedback of warranty costs to production variants. In parallel to the joint development of the OPC UA Companion Specification, CIP and EtherNet/IP will be extended by ODVA SIGs as required to ensure that OPC UA can understand all relevant data without additional effort for end users. "The time is ripe for the OPC UA Companion Specification to ensure that EtherNet/IP meets the requirements of Industry 4.0 and IIoT," emphasizes Dr. Al Beydoun.

The collaboration between ODVA and the OPC Foundation will ensure the scalability and interoperability of critical device information across the enterprise. Most importantly, the OPC UA servers will be able to map and represent CIP objects and provide the services that enable the establishment of a connection and exchange of messages between OPC UA applications and EtherNet/IP. Ultimately, the OPC UA Companion Specification should be able to map CIP objects to the required information models and profiles.