IT Standards Accelerate Industrial Control and Automation Plug-and-Play Data Mapping

Summary

Microsoft’s Erich Barnstedt, in collaboration with Siemens, is taking the lead to simplify and automate the mapping of industrial field device data tags using discoverable data models, such as OPC UA and W3C Web of Things (WoT) standards. This is another step toward achieving important goals, including reducing application engineering labor, using plug-and-play field devices, higher system quality, and leveraging enterprise/cloud applications to improve manufacturing efficiency and profits.

Erich Barnstedt is chief architect, Standards, Consortia & Industrial IoT, Azure Edge & Platform, at Microsoft. He is committed and active in creating open standards. He said, “I think we can all agree that the most time-consuming task in an Industrial IoT project is the mundane job of manually mapping data tags from assets without standardized or discoverable data models to a standard one like OPC UA (i.e. data normalization) for further processing on the edge or in the cloud.” He noted that in his experience, the current way of doing this is not only time-consuming but also prone to various errors that could  be avoided with a standardized way that achieves plug-and-play.

Data models

Barnstedt observed, “What's really sad about this is that it doesn't have to be that way because most industrial assets actually have a fixed, yet proprietary data model that can be found in a datasheet or sometimes even in an Excel spreadsheet that some poor person needs to read and then manually type into the industrial connectivity software in use.” 

Taking the initiative to improve the process, SIEMENS and Microsoft have worked together to leverage open standards to automate this process with the help of W3C Web of Things (WoT) and OPC UA. The idea is that most, if not all, industrial connectivity software already has a built-in "north-bound" OPC UA server that could be used for configuration purposes but lack a standardized schema for configuring "south-bound" industrial assets “So we created one, leveraging WoT Thing Descriptions for the schema and OPC UA for the interface," Barnstedt said.

The time is now

The industrial automation and controls industry has resisted an open approach to multivendor plug-and-play (PnP) that we’ve enjoyed with our computer systems since the 1990s. Today, you simply plug in devices from any vendor into your computer system, and it automatically works without having to do any special programming or configuration. This includes printers, USB sticks, networks, Internet Service Provider connections, disk drives, keyboards, video cameras, game pads and virtual reality headsets. The computer automatically recognizes the device, loads new drivers for the hardware if needed, and begins to work with the newly connected device.

Unfortunately, major automation vendors within their proprietary architectures and application development software suites have their own proprietary way of accomplishing a level of plug-and-play for their products and gated/exclusive ecosystem partners. The answer they express is: “If you only use our systems, it is not a problem!" which is reminiscent of mainframe and minicomputer system manufacturers of the past.

Models paving the way

Users are getting more involved with standards and semantic data model development because it is essential to achieve Industry 4.0/Industrial digitalization to remain competitive and profitable. Encouraging is the collaboration to further interoperability of OT and IT systems between many organizations including the OPC Foundation, NAMUR, ECLASS Association, VDMA, ZVEI and CESMII.

The industrial automation and controls system architecture is the framework that defines the structure and functions of an automation system. The industry started with closed architectures out of necessity and is slowly evolving to open multivendor-interoperable architecture.

Seeing is believing

Erich Barnstedt continued, “Of course, seeing is believing. Hence, we created a reference implementation to demonstrate the concept in the form of the UA Edge Translator application, which runs in a Docker container for easy deployment on Docker- or Kubernetes-enabled industrial edge gateways. We then extended the UI of UA Cloud Publisher to configure UA Edge Translator in a single click. For now, UA Edge Translator only handles Modbus assets, but others can be easily added." Then, he added, "We also provide a sample WoT (Web of Things) configuration file for a SIEMENS SENTRON PAC energy meter, already containing the required information to map the meter to the standardized OPC UA PROFI Energy companion specification, directly loaded from the UA Cloud Library. Note: you can register on the website for free to gain access.  Let me know what you think and if you are interested in building this into your industrial connectivity software, I'm happy to help!”

Web of Things (WoT)

The mission of the Web of Things (WoT) Working Group is to counter the fragmentation of IoT through the specification of building blocks that enable easy integration of IoT devices and services across IoT platforms and application domains. These building blocks are intended to complement and enhance existing standards.  Providing standardized metadata and other re-usable technological building blocks, W3C WoT enables easy integration across IoT platforms and application domains. The W3C WoT Working Group (WG) is tasked to create standards-track specifications and test suites.  Web of Things (WoT) co-Chairs are Michael McCool (Intel) and Sebastian Käbisch (Siemens AG).

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a track record of delivering globally recognized standards, including HTML and CSS upon which the Web is built. W3C and its members have made advances of important social and economic value: nearly five hundred open standards have powered the creation of 2 billion websites. The Consortium has also been fundamental in the emergence of transformative phenomena like social media, e-commerce, video on the web and video conferencing, which have transformed all our lives. W3C’s work empowers people with disabilities to access the web, supports websites in languages and cultures all around the world, and improves web security through strong authentication. These successes are possible because W3C standards may be used by anyone, and at no cost thanks to the royalty-free W3C Patent Policy.