by Stephanie Neil, Automation.com
The Coalition of Open Process Automation unveils COPA QuickStart for open process automation.
Since about 2015, when Don Bartusiak, the then chief engineer at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering, publicly advocated for the development of a new, standards-based, open—yet secure—process control architecture, the industry has been working to solve the problem of proprietary vendor lock-in. In 2017, The Open Group, a vendor-neutral technology consortium, launched the Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF), and began work on developing business guides and the Open Process Automation Standard (O-PAS), which is currently on version 2.1
O-PAS version 3.0 is not yet released, but it does promise to deliver a usable system. So, as the standard matures and user labs are set up across the world, the next step is to start deploying O-PAS enabled products.
But it’s a pretty big step to adopt these commercial products, and manufacturers have many questions about how to get started with open process automation. The answers may come from the new Coalition of Open Process Automation (COPA).
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