O&M Standards Collaboration

Nov. 18, 2003
Three groups are joining forces to cooperate on an integrated maintenance specification.

The Instrumentation Systems and Automation Society (ISA, www.isa.org), the Machinery Information Management Open Systems Alliance (MIMOSA, www.mimosa.org) and the OPC Foundation (for OLE for Process Control, www.opcfoundation.org) have announced a collaboration effort to develop interoperable open solutions spanning from the factory floor through the enterprise.

The three organizations have agreed to establish a Joint Working Group to determine how to coordinate their various standards development efforts. The objective is to simplify the development of interoperable Operations & Maintenance (O&M) systems, equipment and software.

Responding to new developments in Web Services technology and Microsoft .Net, the OPC Foundation has also underlined its aim to transition its specifications away from traditional “component”-based connectivity toward a unified architecture through the use of vendor products that will be interoperable with full Internet connectivity and scalability across platforms of the end-users’ choice.

For example, the OPC XML DA (eXtensible Markup Language for data access) specification breaks the tradition of COM/DCOM (for Component Object Model/Distributed COM) communications on which OPC has relied since its beginnings in 1997. Web Services and XML remove the limitation for data and information to be isolated behind a corporate firewall, therefore opening up cross-platform connectivity over the Internet.

Sponsored Recommendations

Shorten project timelines with these hidden-gem Ignition efficiency tips for designing HMIs, provided by Inductive Automation Sales Engineer Reese Tyson.
Get ready for that “where has this been all my life?” moment—over 25 hidden Ignition features await in our webinar. Our experts show how to boost your productivity and streamline...
Advanced software solutions, like those built in the Ignition platform from Inductive Automation, can provide a crucial means to navigating electrical grid challenges.
Unlock seamless data flow across your manufacturing sites with MQTT and Ignition—turn siloed operations into a connected, data-driven enterprise. Discover how standardization,...