2019 article
Integrating A Dynamic Simulator and Advanced Process Control using the OPC-UA Standard
47TH SME NORTH AMERICAN MANUFACTURING RESEARCH CONFERENCE (NAMRC 47), Vol. 34, pp. 813β819.
Insufficient interoperability has long been an issue on the factory floor, however, new technologies and standards are enabling production systems to become more agile and interoperable. A communication standard can, for example, make interoperation among different vendor-specific software and hardware tools in production systems easier and more reliable. In this paper, we share our research results and experience for the establishment of a connection between a dynamic simulator and an advanced process controller in a manufacturing system using OPC-UA. The OPC-UA communication protocol, which is middleware, acts as a common interface between these systems. We established the client and server for communication and defined an exchange data structure based on the OPC-UA standard for a control problem in a chemical process plant. The case study is a proof of concept of the OPC-UA standard implementation to support interoperability for different domains.