The goal of the conference was to share information on how the PackML unit/machine Implementation Guidelines from OMAC can reduce time and costs of integration of equipment. See the upcoming July issue ofPACKAGING WORLDfor conference coverage, but in the meantime here are a few observations from John Kowal, an attendee at the conference. Director of Business Development at B&R and a long-time stakeholder in and advocate of all things PackML, Kowal thinks that PackML and OPC UA really fit well together, as do MTConnect and OPC UA (MTConnect is a manufacturing technical standard to retrieve process information from numerically controlled machine tools: www.mtconnect.org).
“Essentially,” notes Kowal, “PackML and MTConnect define data communications standards while OPC UA defines a common communications standard that had long been a missing link. OPC UA has enjoyed a wave of adoption because it offers interoperability all the way from machine to cloud. This is essential for IIoT to take hold. We are also calling out these standards in the Industrial Internet Consortium’s Smart Factory Task Group (www.iiconsortium.org/vertical-markets/manufacturing.htm).”
