OPC-UA communications integration using a CPPS architecture

Abstract

Low Cost Automation promotes cost effective reference architectures and development approaches to increase flexibility and efficiency of production operations. This has led to the adoption of open networking standards for plant floor communications. OPC-UA may help industrial companies to become Industry 4.0 or Smart Manufacturing as it enables remote access to plant information, achieving thus horizontal and vertical integration. The main goal of this work is to make vertical integration a reality by means of a low-cost CPPS architecture that provide access to process data. The use of this architecture along the whole production automation system may certainly reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The paper describes both the hardware platform as well as the software including the proposed configuration file of the OPC-UA server.