Deeper collaboration on PA-DIM standardisation

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IBG - SA Instrumentation & Control Buyers' Guide

September 2022 News

Major standards development and end-user organisations serving the process automation industry have committed to ongoing collaborative work on the specification for a standardised Process Automation Device Information Model (PA-DIM). Participating organisations plan to share ownership of the specification and collaboratively participate in the PA-DIM working group, hosted at FieldComm Group, creating enhancements and extensions to the PA-DIM specification.

Expanding ownership to these organisations and their members will further solidify the adoption of the OPC UA-based standard model for core field device information in process automation plants today, and new products going forward. New co-owners of the PA-DIM specification include ISA100 WCI, ODVA, Profibus/Profinet International, NAMUR, VDMA and ZVEI.

Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation (OPCF) president and executive director, commented: “Digitalisation needs a secure transfer of globally accepted information models across industries, technologies and applications. No single organisation can achieve this alone! OPCF, as a co-owner from the beginning, welcomes the extended ownership of PA-DIM to ensure this necessary global acceptance. OPC UA over MQTT is the only accepted field-to-multi-cloud solution – the combination with PA-DIM plus 70+ additional information models is unique."

Since 2017, FieldComm Group and OPC Foundation, as original co-owners and co-developers, have collaborated with standards organisations and users to create the PA-DIM specification to address end-user use cases and requirements as outlined in NAMUR’s recommendations (NE 175, NE 176), also known as the NAMUR Open Architecture. The first version of the specification was published on 31 March 2020 and includes an information model and semantic identifiers for common process automation instrument types including pressure, differential pressure, temperature, level, flow and valve positioners. Current activity within the working group is focused on extending the model to include process analysers.

The PA-DIM specification allows for protocol-agnostic communication of common process automation instrument parameters, including semantic IDs as defined by IEC 61987, using OPC UA information modelling techniques. Eliminating automation protocol dependencies simplifies the integration of IT and OT systems. Including semantic device information enables unambiguous machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. Fieldbus-specific implementations are converted into the address space of the PA-DIM Information Model.

Products using PA-DIM can easily support the NAMUR Open Architecture (NOA) use cases including automated-as-built, unique identification, device dimensioning, multivariable possibility check, read multivariable process values, device lifecycle backup, health monitoring and diagnosis.

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Deeper collaboration on PA-DIM standardisation

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