Flexible Skill-based Production Systems through novel OPC UA Design Approaches

In order to align future forms of production with flexibility, interoperability, and adaptability, the essential steps toward horizontal and vertical integration are indispensable. This paper discusses a conventional and conceptual approach to OPC UA communication and intelligent orchestration of skill-based control logic. The conceptual approach synthesizes this idea with agent structures to provide the possibility to access and combine production capabilities in a reconfigurable manner whilst ensuring the stringent technical requirements on lower automation layers realized by Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs).