The OPC UA Companion Specification for Powertrain will be split into several specification parts. This first part of the specification provides a manufacturer-independent information model of the powertrain that enables asset management applications for the user. The interface standard claims to cover all types of electrical powertrain including mechanical transmission elements. It can be used for a powertrain consisting of a motor starter, motor and gearbox as well as for complex motion or multi-axis systems.

The first part of the OPC UA Companion Specification for Powertrain includes a basic description for every powertrain variant and its main scope is to provide essential technical data for asset management applications.

The information model contains an asset model that represents the physical assets (pieces of hardware that can be ordered) and soft assets (firmware and licences, that can be ordered) as well as their attributes (catalogue data). By use of specific references, the relationship of asset components can be represented.

Future parts will address the following topics:

Functional operation data

Information about the current status and operating values are required by vertical higher-level systems. They are used, for example, by the operator on a visualization, master controllers or MES to make process or management decisions. The information can also be used for further analytical functions in e.g. IoT gateways or cloud services.

Functional diagnosis

Diagnosis is the recognition and evaluative summary of symptoms to determine the root cause of a failure. For this purpose, the companion specification enables the configuration of diagnosis functions, the determination of the powertrain diagnostic state, the detection of actual error causes, the reading of an event log and the possibility to record data (data trace).

Condition monitoring

Condition monitoring is the process of determining the condition of machinery while in operation, in order to identify a significant change which is indicative of a developing fault. This is a major part of predictive maintenance where the maintenance is scheduled to shorten the downtime.

Commissioning

Commissioning includes activities to establish the operating condition of a powertrain. The OPC UA Companion Specification for Powertrain does not only focus on the commissioning of a single device. It provides interfaces which serve the commissioning of complete systems.

Backup & Restore

A prior backup is indispensable for the efficient replacement of devices or of entire systems. Here, the focus is also on a holistic approach to restore the data in the field.