At its Annual General Meeting, the OPC Foundation announced the establishment of the Joint Working Group "LADS - Laboratory Agnostic Device Standard". In addition to the OPC Foundation, the industry associations Spectaris and VDMA are also members. The aim of LADS is to create a manufacturer-independent, open standard for analytical and laboratory devices that comprehensively maps the various customer industries and their respective workflows, is sustainable and also meets future requirements for digitalization and automation.

Today's laboratory infrastructures are made up of many highly specialized devices from a wide range of manufacturers. Different interfaces and data formats make it difficult to network these devices with each other and integrate them into existing IT infrastructures. However, this is the most important prerequisite for end-to-end digitalization and efficient automation. There is currently no comprehensive, efficient and robust solution for this. Spectaris has therefore been working on an answer to this challenge in its "Networked laboratory devices" working group since 2016. The first foundations have already been laid in recent months. "With the creation of a working group together with the OPC Foundation and the VDMA, the involvement of all international and national interested stakeholders is now beginning," says Mathis Kuchejda, Chairman of the Association for Analytical, Biological and Laboratory Technology.

As part of the OPC UA Working Group, this standard is being developed as a so-called OPC UA Companion Specification for analytical and laboratory equipment. The decision in favor of OPC UA as the basic technology will not only enable the networking of devices in the laboratory in the future, but also the connection to the classic industrial infrastructure. "We as VDMA are pleased that the trends set in mechanical and plant engineering for the development of OPC UA interface standards are also finding favor in the field of laboratory device communication. Through future cooperation, we will jointly develop another piece of the puzzle of the production landscape fully described by OPC UA interface standards - and this will be harmonized across industries through OPC UA for Machinery," says Andreas Faath, Head of OPC UA at VDMA.