A work­ing group of inter­na­tion­al com­pan­ies in the field of smart work­hold­ing devices and tool hold­ers from the industry developed the spe­cific­a­tion to ensure inter­op­er­able com­mu­nic­a­tion between wire­less peri­pher­als and soft­ware sys­tems, such as machine tool con­trol systems,
man­u­fac­tur­ing exe­cu­tion sys­tems and stan­dalone mobile devices. The inform­a­tion mod­el cov­ers essen­tial para­met­ers such as forces, tem­per­at­ure, rota­tion­al speed, oper­at­ing hours, pos­i­tion, and more. By provid­ing a com­mon semant­ic descrip­tion, OPC 40505 enables con­sist­ent mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation of data across dif­fer­ent machines and devices.

The spe­cific­a­tion aligns with the semantics defined in the Bluetooth Low Energy Indus­tri­al Meas­ure­ment Device Ser­vice (IMDS) standard.

This IMDS stand­ard gov­erns wire­less com­mu­nic­a­tion between peri­pher­al devices and con­trol­lers. It enables plug and play con­nectiv­ity for wire­less tool hold­ers and oth­er mov­able components—such as work hold­ing devices—within the machin­ing area of a machine tool.
Com­mu­nic­a­tion is estab­lished via a machine-integ­rated gate­way, ensur­ing seam­less integ­ra­tion between peri­pher­al devices and the machine tool’s con­trol system.

The final spe­cific­a­tion was released in Q4 2025 and is jointly pub­lished as a VDMA Spe­cific­a­tion and by the OPC Found­a­tion. It is freely avail­able to all companies.