Open Process Automation

What is OPA

Open Process Automation (OPA) is an initiative to create a new generation of automation systems with a distinctly different architecture than the Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) used in today’s process and factory automation strategies. To achieve the high availability and real-time performance required by automation applications, these systems have always been highly proprietary, with each system provider creating unique solutions. This is especially true at the process I/O level, controller, and core software level, generally making these systems very difficult to update or replace.  

The Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) envisions a standards-based, open, secure, and interoperable process control architecture to achieve the following:

• Enables access to a leading-edge capability
• Allows integration of best-in-class components
• Preserves asset owners' application software; Significantly lowers cost of future replacement
• Promotes innovation and value creation
• Applies across multiple process industries
• Encourages innovation and value creation
• Is commercially available
• Is an inclusive collaboration between users and suppliers to provide the framework for an open systems architecture innovation and value creation

OPA’s goal is to bring together OT and IT technologies, utilizing standards, to reduce the Capex and Opex costs of automation. The OPA system uses components, technology, and standards to achieve the same level of high availability and performance of the existing automation strategies. The OPA standards cover the physically connected world of Input/Outputs (Distributed Control Nodes – DCN) to the core compute and user interface functions (The Advanced Compute Platform – ACP), focusing on the communications and interfaces for all of these components. These standards allow for selecting, adding, and upgrading critical components based on “best of breed” criteria and not a single supplier. Standard communication interfaces allow the addition of new applications such as machine learning and advanced process control without the high cost of today’s systems integration. The use of smaller, interchangeable I/O devices and local compute capabilities (DCNs) opens up new ways of looking at and implementing complex control strategies.