"With Part 1 of the OPC 40451-1 UA CS for Tightening Systems now available, we have laid the foundation for the seamless integration of tightening systems in digital production as the Industrial Internet of Things," says Mohit Agarwal, member of the working group. "More pieces will follow to enable additional use cases via OPC UA and enable a long-term vision for interoperable, harmonized models across connectivity technologies and other domains."

"This will publish another important chapter of the global language of production and even realize cross-industry interoperability by using the basic specification 'OPC UA for Machinery'," says Andreas Faath, Head of Department VDMA Machine Information Interoperability.

The use cases for the OPC 40451-1 UA CS for Tightening Systems specification were developed in collaboration with customers. Part 1 of the Companion Specification mainly deals with the three important use cases Asset Management, Condition Monitoring and Result Management. The information model enables manufacturer-independent access to asset information for the entire tightening system, i.e. including components such as tools, controls and feed units. According to the VDMA, a real milestone is that the standardized tightening result - which can be accessed regardless of the manufacturer - enables the traceability of safety-critical connections.

The 'Tightening Systems' group is part of a larger initiative called 'Industrial Joining Technologies', which aims to describe common information models that are reusable for the field of joining, including bonding, riveting, flow drilling screws, etc. To achieve interoperability and extensibility, many models, such as Asset Identification, Result Data and Result Access, will be harmonized with the OPC Foundation working groups.

The next part of the Companion Specification is already in progress. The planned topics are Commands, Events, Joint, Asset Extensions, Result Extensions and others.