VDMA, OPC Foundation and FEM are working together to reduce the effort of integrating cranes and hoists with other machines and installations, and higher-level production systems.
By founding the Joint Working Group OPC UA for Cranes and Hoists, the members of the VDMA Materials Handling and Intralogistics Association and FEM Cranes and Lifting Equipment Product Group are taking an important step towards achieving this goal.
In the first phase of the project, the aim is to develop a Companion Specification for Cranes and Hoists Part 1, which will enable standardised communication between cranes and external systems, such as MES, ERP or Cloud as part of future Industry 4.0 machine-to-machine communication.
During the kick-off-meeting, the attending Member company representatives elected Eberhard Becker, Demag Cranes & Components, as Chairman of the Joint Working Group and Henri Gört, Konecranes, as Deputy Chairman.
“The awareness of our initiative is steadily growing in the industry. Today, already 12 companies and research institutes are collaborating on the project. Broad participation is important to us, it will help achieving a high level of acceptance of the communication standard for cranes“ said newly elected Chairman Eberhard Becker.
Companies interested in participating can contact Paul Zepf, Paul.Zepf@vdma.org.
