News

ERDi Testlab plans announced in Orlando, Florida

Published 20/2/2019

John Kirkman, Managing Director of ETP and UWA I4.0 ERDi Testlab Foundation Partner, recently attended the ARC Industry Forum 2019 in Orlando, Florida and participated in a panel discussion on the Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) and NAMUR. He also participated in the OPAF quarterly workshops.

 The Open Process Automation Forum is viewed by a growing number of process automation industry experts and analysts as a key initiative in the realisation of an open, interoperable operations management and process control technology market.

 OPAF is an industry led initiative catering for physical goods industries i.e. oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, paper and pulp, chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing that aims to deliver an aligned suite of standards (heavily utilising existing standards) and technology conformance testing capability that will ultimately usher in an interoperable technology market in which there are many benefits.

 This outcome is critical in realising the Industry 4.0 operating models of a connected and continually optimising operation. The ERDi Testlab aims to become a provider of OPAF technology compliance certification services for many of the OPAF standards as they are ratified over the project.

 OPAF released the first five parts of the Open Process Automation Standards (OPAS) earlier this month, which has been a significant output in such a short time frame, and are now moving onto the next suite of standards in the plan.

 Currently OPAF has over 80 active member companies including ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Shell, BASF, BP, Dupont, Merck and Co. Total, Woodside, Dow Chemical, Koch Industries, ABB, Siemens, Yokogawa, Schneider Electric, Nxt Control, Rockwell, Honeywell, WindRiver, IBM, Intel, Microsoft.

 To find out more about the OPAF work, a good starting point is the OPAF Business Guide

 In addition to the business guide you can find more about OPAF in a number of industry articles from various process automation publications from organisations including ARC Industry, Control Global, AutomationWorld.

 The UWA I4.0 ERDI Testlab will provide a unique facility for Energy and Resources companies to learn about, test and trial new OPAF compliant interoperable technologies as they emerge on the market, whilst also providing education on strategies to architecturally prepare for the emerging capabilities. This will enable organisations to incrementally realise the benefits of interoperable architectures in the shortest possible timeframe. Both the ERDi and AMIRA International P1208 Project has received support from NERA and METS Ignited Industry Growth Centres; they welcome the ongoing collaboration in this space.

 The ERDi project is currently finalising detailed design and technology partners for the core architecture of the Lab. More technology partners will announced in the coming months. The Testlab build will commence in April this year.

 If you would like to be notified of progress and events, please register on our contact page.

 Further, Mining and Oil and Gas companies operating in Australia are encouraged actively participate in this work by becoming project partners of the AMIRA International P1208 Project. The collaborative project will provide project partners with access to globally recognised process automation and interoperability subject matter experts who will facilitate and support industry as they prepare to adopt OPAF standards.

 To find out more about the UWA I4.0 ERDi Testlab or the AMIRA International P1208 Project please contact any of the team below:

 Eric May eric.may@uwa.edu.au

John Kirkman johnkirkman@etpartners.com.au

Jill Stajduhar jill.stajduhar@uwa.edu.au

Richard Macoun richard.macoun@amirainternational.com