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the umati vision

Connectivity is key for all machinery in the 21st century. It means getting data in and out of devices and software systems. For the benefit of users of machinery, and the machine building industries themselves, umati tackles this issue by promoting open standards throughout the world.

umati serves to exploit new poten­tials for man­u­fac­tur­ing of the future by:

  • Sim­pli­fy­ing the effort for machine con­nec­tion to cus­tom­er-spe­cif­ic IT infra­struc­tures and ecosystems.
  • Sim­pli­fy­ing the effort for machine-to-machine and machine-to-device communication
  • Redu­cing costs through faster real­iz­a­tion of cus­tom­er spe­cif­ic projects.

the umati promise

Make connectivity between machinery and software easy, secure and seamless – to help customers exploit added value from data.

To achieve this, umati cre­ates a com­munity and an eco­sys­tem con­sist­ing of:

  • OPC UA Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tions to define glob­ally applic­able semantics for machinery
  • Com­mu­nic­a­tion Default Require­ments for the imple­ment­a­tion of an OPC UA envir­on­ment (e.g., encryp­tion, authen­ti­fic­a­tion, serv­er set­tings (ports, pro­to­cols) to allow plug-and-play con­nectiv­ity between machines and software
  • Qual­ity Assur­ance through test­ing spe­cific­a­tions and tools, cer­ti­fic­a­tion, and serving as ombuds­man for sup­pli­er-cli­ent disputes
  • Mar­ket­ing and a label for vis­b­il­ity in the mar­ket through a glob­al com­munity of machine build­ers, com­pon­ent sup­pli­ers, and added value services.

the umati mission

Providing visibility and joint, cross-industry marketing for the simplest possible connectivity in the machinery sector.

  • Aims primar­ily at cus­tom­ers and end users = buy­ers and users of machines, install­a­tions and soft­ware from the machine manufacturers
  • Aims sec­ond­ar­ily at com­pan­ies in the machinery sec­tor itself, e.g. to enforce inter­op­er­ab­il­ity across con­trol plat­forms, to estab­lish hori­zont­al con­nectiv­ity, to be pre­pared for the future by stand­ard­iz­ing and using open inter­faces and to save money and effort to improve the products.
  • Is not a stand-alone OPC UA Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tion – the use of OPC UA Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tions is the basis of umati.
  • Provid­ing the user prom­ise of “plug and play” through guidelines for a “uni­fied” OPC UA Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tion imple­ment­a­tion for products of the machinery industries.
  • Will be estab­lished as a product label in the long run to sig­nal trust and reli­ab­il­ity to the end cus­tom­ers (“We as machine build­ers take care that you, dear cus­tom­er, can eas­ily get data from your machines”)

setting the standard

Creating a standard with global acceptance is a challenge. umati relies on OPC UA as the global interoperability standard.

The stand­ard­iz­a­tion work takes place in sev­er­al joint work­ing groups with vari­ous sec­tors of machine build­ing indus­tries and the OPC Found­a­tion. This guar­an­tees con­sid­er­a­tion of indi­vidu­al needs for dif­fer­ent tech­no­lo­gies, max­im­um trans­par­ency and the sup­port of a strong glob­al community.

OPC UA and the OPC Found­a­tion:

  • provide a frame­work for stand­ard­ized com­mu­nica­ti­uon (How to communicate)
  • allows focus­ing on defin­ing the what is to be com­mu­nic­ated (Com­pan­ion speficiations)
  • include a glob­al com­munity for revis­ing the standard
  • assists in a glob­al out­reach be pub­lish­ing the stand­ard with no license fee.

The joint work­ing groups focus on set­ting stand­ards for ver­tic­al and/or hori­zont­al integ­ra­tion of machinery, install­a­tions, com­pon­ents, and pro­duc­tion IT ecosystems.

The fol­low­ing groups are par­ti­cip­at­ing in the umati com­munity already:

  • Robot­ics
  • Machine Vis­ion
  • Machine Tools and Man­u­fac­tur­ing Systems
  • Rub­ber and Plastics Machinery
  • … more to come

Because some inform­a­tion items are com­mon through­out all machinery indus­tries, an OPC UA for Machinery as base spe­cific­a­tion is also under devel­op­ment. The first ver­sion was released in Septem­ber 2020. It aims to har­mon­ize aspects such as

  • Machine iden­ti­fic­a­tion
  • Com­pon­ent identification
  • Find­ing all Machines in a Server
  • Machine state (cur­rently in development)

building the community

umati brings machine builders and users together.

Part­ners involved in umati make a com­mon prom­ise to their cus­tom­ers: “We as machine build­ers, com­pon­ent or soft­ware sup­pli­ers jointly take care that you, dear cus­tom­er, can eas­ily access data from your machines.

The com­munity is shar­ing the les­sons learned.
Best prac­tices for imple­ment­a­tion are shared and published .
The com­munity gath­ers feed­back from their users to improve the products and specifications .
With joint show­cases and plug­fests the imple­ment­a­tion and func­tion­al­ity is proven.
The com­munity is aim­ing glob­al accept­ance by integ­rat­ing vendors and cus­tom­ers worldwide.
The involved parties agree upon identic­al imple­ment­a­tions and configurations.
The umati part­ners prom­ise plug and play for the bene­fit of the enduser .