ABB, Bosch Rexroth, B&R, Cisco, General Electric, Kuka, National Instruments, Parker Hannifin, Schneider Electric, SEW-Eurodrive and TTTech are jointly promoting OPC UA over Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) as the standardized communication solution between industrial controllers and the cloud. The reason for the initiative is that this solution, which is based on open standards, enables devices from different manufacturers to be fully compatible with each other in industrial applications. At SPS IPC Drives, the participating companies committed to supporting OPC UA TSN in future product generations. Until now, different protocols have been used for communication between devices in industrial automation, which are not compatible with each other. As a result, customers are often trapped in proprietary systems. In order to support the different protocol worlds, product manufacturers have to develop multiple versions of fundamentally identical products. Under these conditions, innovations and new automation concepts can only be implemented to a limited extent. For customers, this means that they cannot exploit the full potential of their automation solutions.

To solve this problem, the companies involved have launched a technical collaboration within the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and the OPC Foundation. The partner companies are striving for a fully open, standardized, compatible IIoT solution for real-time peer-to-peer communication. This will enable controllers to exchange standardized data both with each other and with the cloud. The companies see OPC UA TSN as the future standard for industrial automation and IIoT connectivity.

Common anchor: the IIC testbed

OPC UA TSN is the combination of the OPC UA protocol extended by Publisher/Subscriber (Pub/Sub) and the IEEE TSN Ethernet standard. OPC UA TSN provides all the necessary building blocks to standardize communication in industrial automation. This enables information technology (IT) and operational technologies (OT) to grow together. This creates the basic requirements for the Industrial Internet of Things and I4.0.

The companies aim to support OPC UA TSN in the coming generations of their products.

Other companies welcome

The first prototypes are already being integrated into a testbed at the IIC. The testbed is intended to demonstrate that OPC UA TSN makes it possible to ensure communication between controllers from different manufacturers via a common IT infrastructure. Other companies that share the common vision of standardized communication between controllers as well as between controllers and the cloud are welcome to join the cooperation.