Company Profile
B&R is a global leader in automation technology, headquartered in Eggelsberg, Austria. Founded in 1979 by Erwin Bernecker and Josef Rainer, B&R has grown over 30 years to include 175 offices in 68 countries worldwide.
B&R Industrial Automation (China) Co., Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of B&R, established in Shanghai in 1996. For the past ten years, B&R has been providing automation solutions with deep industry experience and key technologies to China's machinery manufacturing and process industries.
"Deeply cultivating the industry and strengthening software standardization and integration" is the driving force behind B&R's development in China and an important factor in winning trust. Providing customers with perfect automation solutions and becoming a win-win partner is the philosophy that the B&R team believes in, and it is also a precise explanation of the concept of "Perfection in Automation".
For intelligent manufacturing , its foundation is digital interconnection—collecting production data, process parameters, energy consumption, etc. from the entire enterprise, from the underlying equipment and field sensors to the machines, and providing a data analysis basis for global production optimization. Traditional fieldbus only solves data at the control level, while intelligent manufacturing involves global optimization, strategies, paths, and planning. These interconnections also involve the integration of heterogeneous networks and multiple generations of products. OPCUA is the focal point for solving this problem, and it is necessary to analyze it in conjunction with reality and its application.
1. Changes in the Communication Needs of Smart Manufacturing
Smart manufacturing differs from traditional vertical network architectures. In traditional pyramid architectures, data is layered from the bottom to the top. Smart manufacturing, however, faces a new situation: distributed computing units require different data, and data is freely combined and applied in an end-to-end manner. Automation data includes classic architectures, from multiple levels such as control level, process control, workshop management, SCADA, MES/ERP, etc.
Therefore, new automation technologies based on CPS architecture require a completely new architecture to support network interconnection. Traditional fieldbus mainly solves the problem of interconnection (communication protocols and specifications). However, in heterogeneous networks and in the integration of IT and automation, there is an urgent need for semantic interoperability. This includes not only the data transmitted in the communication, but also the syntax and semantics of the data in order to achieve mutual communication and data recognition and processing.
2. Why use OPCUA?
2.1 Introduction to OPCUA Technology
OPCUA aims to solve the interconnection problem at the semantic interoperability layer. Of course, the entire OPCUA architecture, as shown in Figure 1, includes the transmission mechanism, metadata, basic information model and industry information model. The overall architecture design concept is service-oriented architecture (SoA).
Figure 1 OPCUA Architecture
In fact, OPCUA includes transport protocols (supporting TCP binary and WebService transport mechanisms). The right side shows the specification, which includes the metadata model. The OPCUA service set provides various subsets of services related to transport and communication, such as connectivity, attribute management, secure communication services, and browsing. Within the basic information model, OPCUA provides a framework for accessing objects in the address space using standard Web services and ensures the security of information transmission.
The fundamental information model of OPCUA provides visitors with standards for access and operation, as well as standards for data format and semantics.
An OPCUA object is composed of nodes connected by references. Different node classes transmit different semantics. A variable node represents a "value" that can be read or written; variable nodes have associated data types (DataType) to define the actual value, such as strings, floating-point numbers, and structures. Method nodes represent functions that can be invoked; each node has numerous attributes, including a unique identifier called NodeID and a non-localized name called BrowseName.
Both objects and variable nodes are called instance nodes. Nodes always reference a type definition (ObjectType or VariableType), and these nodes describe their semantics and structure.
2.2 Eight main reasons for adopting OPCUA
Figure 2 summarizes the reasons why OPCUA has become a focus of smart manufacturing connectivity technology, as shown in the figure, with the following being particularly important:
(1) OPCUA establishes an information model. For different industries, the essence of achieving interconnection and establishing a collaborative mechanism lies in establishing an information model, collecting and grouping interconnected data according to a certain architecture, and then performing application analysis.
Figure 2: 8 main reasons for supporting OPCUA
(2) Security mechanism: For OPCUA, it supports the X509 security information exchange standard and supports role and rule definition, defining different levels of permission management for applications.
(3) Vendor-independent independence: This is very important for end users, because any company's proprietary communication standards and protocols cannot become a user's standard. OPCUA itself is a non-profit organization, and various technical organizations are willing to follow OPCUA's development. Currently, various fieldbus foundations such as POWERLINK and Profinet have joined the OPCUA Foundation, including vertical industry technical organizations such as FDT/DTM, OMAC/PackML, MTConnect, and Euromap.
3OPCUA for Industry Information Models
The OPCUA Foundation has received support not only from various fieldbus organizations, but also from industry technology organizations such as OMAC/PackML, MTConnect, ISA-95, and AutomationML.
As shown in Figure 3, the Euromap 77 specification defines the device interface for interaction between the injection molding machine and the MES. This defines the type and structure of object data. In addition to the basic data model, the machine's data objects and structures include basic machine information, configuration, injection unit, mold, drive system, and other data objects and standards. Euromap 77.2 and 77.3 define the work order and data group management in a standardized way. This allows different upper-level management systems to access injection molding machines from different manufacturers in a standardized manner, monitor their status, and issue instructions to the machines for execution.
Figure 3. Information model structure of Euromap
4. B&R's complete smart manufacturing data interconnection solution
B&R provides a complete solution for the entire interconnected system, including the following layers:
(1) High dynamic real-time response of the equipment - adopts POWERLINK real-time Ethernet technology, which can realize high-speed control tasks for 100μS, and is suitable for time-critical tasks such as motion control, CNC and robots, and high-performance vision systems.
(2) For OPCUA, B&R supports TCP/IP transmission in the asynchronous data phase of POWERLINK, which can be used to solve the transmission of OPCUA (OPCUA itself supports HTTP and TCP transmission). In this way, POWERLINK can be used for semantic data transmission of real-time tasks as well as non-real-time tasks.
(3) openSAFETY is a transmission mechanism for functional safety applications. It can operate independently of the bus. openSAFETY solves the functional safety consistency problem, ensuring that field equipment will not cause harm to the human body and that the control system will not be subject to human-caused damage.
(4) TSN technology: For future IIoT applications, big data transmission and analysis, and to reduce hardware and software investment in communication interconnection, TSN will adopt the new 802.1 transmission mechanism. At present, most leading automation companies such as ABB, B&R, SIEMENS, Schneider, Bosch Rexroth are developing a new generation of TSN products, while other IT vendors, including Huawei and CISCO, are also actively promoting the productization process of TSN.
In addition to its own POWERLINK, openSAFETY, and future-oriented OPCUA+TSN, B&R also has a large number of bus modules for connecting older equipment in its factories, including Profibus, Ethernet/IP, SERCOSIII, and other modules available for interconnection.
