According to ISO standards, a “machine tool is a mechanical device, which is fixed and powered, typically used to process workpieces by selective removal/addition of material or mechanical deformation (…). Machine tools operation can be mechanical, controlled by humans or by computers (…)”. There is a great variety of metalworking machine tools: milling machines, lathes, sheet metal forming machines, EDM machines and additive manufacturing machines are just some examples. Stainless steel, aluminium, titanium and copper are some of the main metals processed by these machine tools. In addition, to manufacture components for key industries like automotive, aerospace, energy and medical technology, machine tools enable the production of all the other machines, including themselves. This is why we call them the mother machines.

For the scope of the standard, mainly machine tools for machining metal and other hard materials were considered. Most of these machine tools are equipped with a CNC Control and a PLC. In order to represent these machine tools with a common OPC UA interface, several use cases were considered.