This document presents the OPC UA Companion Specification for Weighing Technology and covers different scale systems. The document is the result of the “VDMA OPC UA Weighing Technology Initiative” Working Group initially founded by the VDMA, Frankfurt a. M., Germany and including members of international leading manufacturers of weighing technology devices and metrology institutions.

The Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) represents more than 3,200 member companies in the SME-dominated mechanical and systems engineering industry in Germany and Europe. VDMA Measuring and Testing Technology and its more than 180 manufacturers have joined forces in a collaborative platform representing the interests of the Measuring and Testing Technology industry vis-à-vis national and international authorities as well as in other business circles.

The Weighing Technology Department brings together around 60 manufacturers of industrial scales, fine and precision scales, shop scales as well as household and personal scales.

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.

OPC UA is a platform independent service-oriented architecture that integrates all the functionality of the individual OPC Classic specifications into one extensible framework. This multi-layered approach accomplishes the original design specification goals of:

• Platform independence: from an embedded microcontroller to cloud-based infrastructure
• Secure: encryption, authentication, authorization and auditing
• Extensible: ability to add new features including transports without affecting existing applications
• Comprehensive information modelling capabilities: for defining any model from simple to complex