OPC Foundation to Release OPC Analyzer Spec for Review in December

The OPC Foundation has announced December 2008 as the release date for the OPC Analyzer Devices Integration draft specification for review. Since its launch in February 08, the OPC Foundation Analyser Device Integration (ADI) Group has steadily developed in terms of numbers of participants to enable and expedite future PAT & Quality by Design initiatives.

By quickly recognising the critical role that process & laboratory analyser connectivity, control & integration play when creating a QbD Data Management Infrastructure, the group - comprising analyser and automation vendors, systems integrators and end users - has focused on the current issue of multiple vendor data formats and protocols to begin to create an industry standard approach using the principles of OPC Unified Architecture (UA).

The OPC Foundation working group, composed of end-users Abbott, Arla Foods, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and vendors: ABB, CAS, Kaiser Optical Systems, Malvern Instruments, Mettler-Toledo AutoChem, Siemens, Software Toolbox, Sympatec, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Umetrics, and Yokogawa representing both Process Analytical Technology (PAT) and laboratory industries, are developing an information model for analyzer devices to allow plug-and-play multivendor interoperability. The Analyzer Device Integration working group is developing a common method for data exchange and an analyzer data model for process and laboratory analyzers. The model is developed as a logical extension of the OPC UA specifications.