Service-Oriented Application Integration for condition-based maintenance with OPC Unified Architecture

OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) is a new standard for communication between information and automation systems, and devices. One possible application area for OPC UA is communication between intelligent automation devices and information systems. In this paper an approach is presented for utilizing OPC UA in conjunction with Service-Oriented Application Integration (SOAI) of Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and condition monitoring systems in the context of condition-based maintenance (CBM). First, the requirements of application integration in CBM are identified and then a software design combining the mentioned technologies and systems is proposed. The design is evaluated with the help of an experimental implementation and test scenarios.