The VDMA OPC Cranes and Hoists Work­ing Group was estab­lished in 2018 with the aim of devel­op­ing a com­mon, usable, future-proof inter­face for cranes and hoists with a focus on indus­tri­al applic­a­tions. OPC UA was developed based on OPC 40010 Robotics.

The Joint Work­ing Group is organ­ized by VDMA Mater­i­als Hand­ling and Int­ra­lo­gist­ics with sup­port from the OPC Found­a­tion. Over the last years, the core work­ing group of this ini­ti­at­ive, a group of experts from 15 com­pan­ies, have developed Part 1 of the VDMA OPC Cranes and Hoists Com­pan­ion Specification.

Part 1 cov­ers these use cases:

• Super­vi­sion: With the data provided, the crane or hoist sys­tem can be super­vised and mon­itored. Func­tion­al ana­lys­is of indi­vidu­al crane sys­tems with­in the fact­ory is possible.
• Con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing offers the pos­sib­il­ity to determ­ine the con­di­tion of machinery while in oper­a­tion. This is a major com­pon­ent of pre­dict­ive maintenance.
• Asset man­age­ment: The spe­cific­a­tion provides detailed inform­a­tion of the main elec­tric­al and mech­an­ic­al parts.
• Lim­it­a­tion by extern­al sys­tem: The Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tion for cranes provides an inter­face for request­ing lim­it­a­tions to the oper­a­tion of the crane, mak­ing the crane oper­at­ing area safer.

The OPC Cranes and Hoists inform­a­tion mod­el can be used to describe all cur­rent and future crane and hoist sys­tems, such as: Bridge cranes, gantry cranes, light crane sys­tems, sev­er­al con­trol units and load attach­ments or oth­er peri­pher­al devices which do not have their own OPC UA server.

Ongo­ing work for Part 2 and exten­sion of Part 1:

• Inclu­sion of KPIs (e.g. total num­ber of cycles, aver­age load moved dur­ing the cycles, cumu­lat­ive dis­place­ment, based on ISO 12482, ISO 4301)
• Geo­met­ric Meas­ure­ment System
• Energy Con­sump­tion
• Accur­acy Domain