This specification was created by a joint working group of the OPC Foundation and AIM. It defines an OPC UA Information Model to represent and access AutoID Devices.

OPC Foundation

OPC is the interoperability standard for the secure and reliable exchange of data and information in the industrial automation space and in other industries. It is platform independent and ensures the seamless flow of information among devices from multiple vendors. The OPC Foundation is responsible for the development and maintenance of this standard.

Initially, the OPC standard was restricted to the Windows operating system. As such, the acronym OPC was borne from OLE (object linking and embedding) for Process Control. These specifications, which are now known as OPC Classic, have enjoyed widespread adoption across multiple industries, including manufacturing, building automation, oil and gas, renewable energy and utilities, among others.

With the introduction of service-oriented architectures in manufacturing systems came new challenges in security and data modelling. The OPC Foundation developed the OPC UA specifications to address these needs and at the same time provided a feature-rich technology open-platform architecture that was future-proof, scalable and extensible.

AIM

AIM (including AIM Global) is the leading industry association and worldwide authority on automatic identification & data capture technologies (AIDC/AutoID), which comprise barcode, OCR, 2D code, RFID, NFC, RTLS, sensors and mobile computing. It is serving members around the globe as a trusted resource for more than 40 years. AIM actively supports the development of standards through its own Technical Symbology Committee (TSC), Global Standards Advisory Groups, the US and European RFID Experts Groups (REG / EREG) and the IoT Experts Group. Furthermore, AIM experts take a leading role at working groups at standardisation organisations like ISO, ANSI, CEN, CENELEC, ETSI and DIN. AIM Germany (AIM-D e.V., Lampertheim, Germany: www.AIM-D.de) is the regional chapter for central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). AIM members include technology providers, systems integrators, consulting firms, research institutes and other associations. AIM's general goal is to facilitate the market dissemination of AIDC technologies on a reliable basis for the benefit of solution providers and users.