The specification that has now been approved describes the mapping of the Sercos device model and the Sercos device profiles to OPC UA, so that the functions and parameters provided by the corresponding devices are made accessible in a manufacturer-independent manner via OPC UA. Thomas Burke, President of the OPC Foundation, comments: "The Sercos OPC UA Companion Standard enables interoperability between machines, but also machine integration with cloud-based applications in the simplest possible way. Sercos vendors will now be able to benefit from the diverse service-oriented functionalities of the OPC UA architecture and thus easily utilize the vision of data flow from the embedded world to the cloud."

Peter Lutz, Managing Director of Sercos International, adds: "In today's automation systems, devices from different manufacturers have to be integrated and maintained. This results in considerable costs throughout the entire product life cycle. At the same time, process and machine-related information is required in production planning and production control in order to enable efficient use of the available production resources. A promising solution approach is therefore the definition of a standardized mapping that combines the semantics comprehensively defined by Sercos with the OPC UA information model. The possible use cases range from device parameterization and network configuration to energy management and preventive maintenance. New business models can also be implemented easily, as they can be based on standardized and manufacturer-independent semantics."

The specified mapping rules from sercos to OPC UA can be used for various implementation approaches. On the one hand, the OPC UA server functionality can be implemented in a sercos master (e.g. CNC or PLC controller). However, it is also possible to relocate this functionality to a sercos slave and carry out OPC UA access directly with the field devices in parallel with sercos real-time communication or without sercos real-time communication at all. This enables consistent communication with OPC UA right down to field level without having to forego the real-time communication of the sercos automation bus.