Source: Opcfoundation.org, OPC UA Interoperability for Industry 4.0 and IoT

Meeting the Industry 4.0 requirements

Industry 4.0 mandates interoperability and standardized data connectivity for meeting its specific requirements including but not limited to

•  Integration across all levels
•  Secure transfer and authentication at user and application levels
• Conformity to industry standards
• Scalability
• Semantic mapping of various information models to represent the actual products and their production steps
• Ability to plug-and-produce (instant discovery mechanisms that identifies OPC UA enabled devices and their functions when added to a network)

OPC UA serves as the common data connectivity and collaboration standard for local and remote device access in IoT, M2M, and Industry 4.0 settings. It supports OPC UA Server development, OPC UA Client Development and OPC UA Nano Server development for various communication mechanisms:

1. OPC UA client/server Model: This one-to-one communication mechanism is used extensively in automation. The OPC server transfers the data to the OPC client based upon request in a secure, encrypted and reliable manner using the communication protocols such as EtherNet/IP, Modbus, etc.
2. OPC UA PubSub Model: In the network, one-to-many or many-to-one communication mechanism is established. The data is available from the publisher, which can be accessed by multiple subscribers. Along with Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and cloud environment, OPC UA PubSub enables real-time communication at the control level (sensor, actuator or embedded devices) and meets the demands of time-critical applications.
3. OPC UA over TSN: While OPC UA provides a standardized mechanism for data communication in a secure way; TSN is the infrastructure of vast array of sensors, actuators and other automation devices that extends the OPC UA information model down to the field level. TSN provides interoperability to the data link (layer 2) of the communication network. Thus, allowing guaranteed, optimized and scalable bandwidths for real-time capability and low latency in the network.

Utthunga’s OPC Spectrum

Utthunga’s comprehensive integrated automation service portfolio extends from the field-level devices to the enterprise-level systems. Enabling in this endeavour is Utthunga’s uOPC Suite, OPC product portfolio; and consultation and development services that help manufacturers to take advantage of all the modern technologies like AI, mobile devices, big data, machine learning, predictive maintenance, machine vision and more to create a smart industry automation environment.

As a flexible partner for OPC UA, our OPC offerings designed by experienced and certified professionals provide both horizontal (between devices from different vendors on different networks) and vertical support (from the factory floor to the enterprise level) thus enabling the industry 4.0 ecosystem.

Our technical and domain expertise in embedded, mobile, multi-platform and cloud connectivity for OPC UA Server development, OPC UA Client Development and OPC UA Nano Server development using the uOPC Suite helps in planning, executing, and delivering high-grade services and turnkey projects. It is designed to drastically reduce time and efforts to build custom solutions with easy integration and configuration.

Partners, end users, and customers can leverage our IP to deliver mix of solutions and services for:

• Building products using out accelerators (protocol stacks, edge connectivity stack – uCOnnect, cloud application framework- Javelin)
• Connecting heterogeneous system using our industry protocols stacks (HART, FF, PROFIBUS, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP etc.)
• Creating field device integration and connectivity (FDT/DTM, FDI, OPC) solutions

Please visit our website or contact us directly to learn more about our OPC UA capabilities.

What is Product Engineering?

The term product engineering refers to the development of a product from concept to manufacturing and release of the product to the market. With product engineering, all the services, right from the innovation phase to the product deployment and testing phase, come under one umbrella. Product engineering takes care of the entire product life cycle including innovation, design, development of the mechanical/electronic/software components, as well as the testing and deployment of the product.

Product engineering service or PES is an engineering consulting activity that is offered by product engineering companies. This service makes use of hardware, embedded, software and IT services for the design, development, deployment and maintenance of products.

Various Phases of Product Engineering

There are seven key phases in the field of product engineering from the inception to the end of the product lifecycle. Let’s take a look at the importance of these different phases.

1. Product Ideation: This is the first phase where an idea for a product is conceived. The product specifications and requirements are also documented in this stage. Further analysis is done to scrutinize the viability of the idea and to understand if it is worth pursuing.
2. Product Architecture: In this phase, the physical components and functional elements required for the products is decided. This is a key phase as the functions of the product’s basic physical building blocks and how their interfaces relate to the rest of the device are determined.
3. Product Design: Once the concept and architecture are finalized, the work to bring the concepts to life begins with product engineering designs. A lot of work goes including major iterations and improvements are made in this phase before the final design is approved.
4. Product Development: The next phase includes product development and assembly. A great deal of attention is paid during this phase to manage and optimize costs.
5. Product Testing: This phase ensures that the developed product is fault-free. Stringent quality check is conducted to scrutinize and validate the quality of the developed product. In case of an error or fault, rectifications or modifications are made to ensure the quality before the product release.
6. Product Release: Once development and testing are completed, the product is released in the market. Post-release, user reviews and feedback are analyzed to improve the quality/performance of the product. Feedback has to be collected from users to further improve the product in the following versions.
7. Product Sustenance/Re-engineering: This is a crucial phase that helps to keep the product relevant in the market. This phase includes periodic product updates, enhancements and maintenance. A key feature that ensures the continued success of the product is a good customer support system that can address their grievances and promptly rectify any issues they face. This type of maintenance and support can be provided until the end of the product lifecycle or product replacement. Some companies choose to re-engineer or evolve their products so that they can meet the expectations of the customer as per changing times.

Need for Product Engineering in Today’s Technology Space

In today’s volatile, modern technology landscape, product companies not only have to create high-quality reliable products at a fast pace but also have to efficiently manage operational risks and cost. They consistently face the pressure to innovate and maintain their product portfolio, optimize their manufacturing process, and meet/exceed customer expectations.

Many of the world’s largest companies have become beacons of success thanks to path-breaking products that were envisioned and created through years of trials and experimentation. Today fast-paced innovation is the key to survival, and companies choose Product engineering service providers for the development and launch of products at the perfect time.

PES providers offer end-to-end services that help product companies to accelerate the pace of innovation, manage customer needs and navigate through unpredictable market conditions with ease. Experience Design, Web & Mobile Development, Clouds & DevOps, Big Data, and Infrastructure Managed services are the corner stoners of product engineering. The right PES partner can provide you with a professional and motivated team, who can transform your ideas into reality, leverage the latest technological solutions to build profitable products at low cost, and help sustain your core business objectives.

How does Product Engineering Services Help Businesses?

PES services help meet the demand of product companies in the following ways.

• Implementation of the latest features and functionalities
• Superior quality products at a rapid turnaround time
• Cost benefits for product manufacturers
• Quick launching of products in the market

How can Utthunga’s Product Engineering Services Help your Business?

At Utthunga we strive to meet the increased demand for outsourced product engineering services. We aim to help our customers focus more on their core business objectives and to help them benefit from low-cost technological services. Our highly qualified team of product engineers love to build impactful and lasting products and solutions. We offer the following services under our product engineering umbrella:

• Embedded engineering (product design and development services, hardware engineering, firmware engineering, verification and validation)
• Digital engineering (cloud, mobility, IIoT, analytics)
• Software engineering
• Quality Engineering (application testing, device testing, protocol testing, test automation, testing as a service (Taas), and DevOps)
• Data Connectivity and Integration (OPC, industry protocols, field device integration)

The key features of our Product Engineering Services & Solutions include:

• Device/Asset Management applications
• Data Connectivity, Integration & OPC Solutions
• Digital Engineering, Digital Customer Experience Solutions
• Cloud, Edge Computing, Device & Data Analytics
• IT / OT integration
• Device, Controller, IO, Host Development

We have built several accelerators/frameworks that significantly reduce product development time while also ensuring minimum post-release issues:

• DPI framework – Device Programming Interface
• Protocol stacks
• uOPC suite
• IIoT accelerators – Javelin & uConnect
• Simulation framework
• Application Test Automation Framework

To know more about Utthunga’s innovation-led approach for various industry verticals, and our various offerings in the field of product engineering visit : https://utthunga.com/product-engineering-services/

Machine monitoring:

Industrial automation systems leverage embedded software development capabilities to monitor the system’s condition in real-time through controlled monitoring of variables like power, flow rate, vibration, pressure, temperature, and more. The monitoring devices such as sensors and probes communicate with each other and/or the client-server systems located in the internet or cloud via the industry communication protocols such as MTConnect, HART, EtherNet/IP etc.
Aggregated data from the disparate data sources is then stored in the cloud or a centralised database for real-time analysis to provide actionable insights through dashboards, reports and notifications. It is a proactive approach to maintaining plant uptime/reliability; reduce production losses and maintenance costs. Industrial embedded systems can perform machine monitoring to help improve productivity, optimize equipment capabilities and measure performance.

Machine control:

Using embedded system engineering services in various industrial equipment to perform specific range of tasks such as controlling assembly line speeds, fluid flow rates in a CNC machine, controlling robotic machinery etc. changed the industrial automation landscape. Communicating at the I/O level via PLCs, these systems easily integrate with the existing machine controls, leveraging automation software along with proprietary NC and CNC functionality. Industrial OEMs and manufacturing plants, can hence benefit from reduced maintenance costs, achieve a centralised and unified control architecture and optimize their performance capabilities and overall product quality.

Leverage Utthunga’s embedded systems capabilities

Industrial OEMs and plant owners vision of Industry 4.0 and IIoT is total and complete automation of the industrial network through intelligent machines and digital systems. The new communication and information techniques mandate:

1. Localization and networking of all systems using energy-efficient systems that transfer only the required information
2.  Strong security measures for secure data transfer
   Our embedded engineering services including but not limited to system/product design and wireless SoC based product development (firmware/stack/hardware), IoT allows us to provide complete end-to-end solutions for the OEMs, process and factory-manufacturing units to address the above-mentioned embedded engineering problems.
   Faced with the wide range of embedded system applications, multiple opportunities and challenges, they can realize both economic and performance breakthroughs by opting for Utthunga’s team of highly skilled and embedded professionals certified in product design, firmware architecture, hardware architecture, verification & validation, certifications and a strong partner for PCB fabrication and prototyping.
   One of the key enablers for smart manufacturing is the embedded OPC-UA technology that has enabled industrial devices to communicate in a standard, scalable and secure format. Utthunga’s embedded software development services proficiency can help them to achieve platform independence and interoperability to overcome the increased client/server complexity. Our embedded solutions leverage machine learning, AI, and data analytics to help monitor and control the HMIs, vision, PLCs, and motion solutions while offering recommendations for better performance, greater embedded system logic, control, and scalability.

Our embedded stack development services leverages our competencies in embedded technologies to keep pace with the rapidly evolving machine monitoring and machine control requirements and provide embedded industrial automation solutions related to:

1. Product Design and Development:
• End to end product development
• Firmware, hardware application development
• Electro mechanical product development
2. Process Automation:
• Metering application
• Loop powered design and development
• IS certification engineering service
• Sensor integration and sensor application development
3. Factory Automation:
• Condition monitoring
• IoT gateway
• Edge computing
• Enable legacy machines for IoT
• Industrial protocol simulator
• Wireless application development
4. Oil and Gas Services:
• Industrial I/O module development
• Sensor module development
• Level transmitter design and development

Please visit our website or contact us directly to learn more about our embedded software development services and systems expertise.