VDMA OPC Machine Vision initiative: Making Machine Vision Ready for Industry 4.0
“Wouldn’t it be great, if machines could communicate in a direct way with each other? This idea is at the core of the Industry 4.0 movement to create the smart factory of the future. The goal of reaching "interoperability" is the new core competence that must distinguish our future products in a connected world of Industrial IoT - but even more, the acting people and organizations involved. As chairman of the VDMA OPC Machine Vision Initiative and its working group, I am proud that Machine Vision plays a pioneering role and as one of the first VDMA divisions, is presenting the release of an OPC UA Companion Specification to the public, thanks to the extraordinary commitment and cooperation by the core working group members who worked very hard and made it possible,” says Dr. Horst Heinol-Heikkinen, Managing Director of ASENTICS and board member of VDMA Robotics and Automation and VDMA Machine Vision.
Stefan Hoppe, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation commented: "The OPC Foundation truly appreciates the results of the VDMA OPC Machine Vision initiative. The initiative has taken a decisive step forward into the Industry 4.0 era that is second to none. Beyond the work done to adopt OPC UA as the interoperability platform for Machine Vision, we applaud the joint working group for embracing the spirit of inter-organizational collaboration on a global scale with G3. This ‘big thinking’ aligns well with a key OPC Foundation focus on encouraging organizations to work together to reduce the vast number of overlapping ‘custom’ information models into a harmonized set of OPC UA Companion Specifications. This will benefit end-users and vendors around the world by lowering the barriers in the way of true interoperability.”