Enable Digital Transformation with EtherNet/IP™ and OPC UA
As manufacturers embrace the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0, the need for seamless communication between OT and IT has never been more important. ODVA is working to enhance the value of EtherNet/IPTM by enabling reliable, secure communications between the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP™) and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA). By mapping CIP information into OPC UA information models, manufacturers gain consistent, contextualized data that enables advanced analytics, predictive maintenance, cloud connectivity, and smarter decision-making.
What is OPC UA?
OPC UA is one of many industry standard technologies commonly used across all major cloud vendors. It has been integrated into leading cloud vendors’ gateway reference architectures, providing for general purpose industrial gateways. The commonality of OPC UA and its extensibility led to the launching of a joint working group with the OPC Foundation to develop an OPC UA companion specification to the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP).
Why EtherNet/IP and OPC UA?
EtherNet/IP provides rich device and application data used throughout industrial automation systems. OPC UA provides a platform-independent framework for securely exchanging structured information between devices, software applications, and enterprise systems.
ODVA developed standardized OPC UA information models, that represent CIP devices and services in a consistent format, preserve the context of automation data, making it easier for higher-level applications to understand, analyze, and use information from the production environment.
How ODVA and OPC UA Work Together
The coordination of ODVA and the OPC Foundation will ensure scalability and interoperability of key device information with critical meaning across the entire enterprise. Specifically, OPC UA servers will be able to map to and expose CIP objects and will have the services to allow establishing a connection and exchanging well-formed messages between OPC UA applications and EtherNet/IP. The end goal is to create an OPC UA companion specification that will map CIP objects to the needed information models and profiles.
Joint Working Group
A joint working group, composed of members of ODVA and the OPC Foundation, is working to identify critical device-to-cloud use cases which will drive the scope of the work to be done.
OPC UA Companion Specification to CIP
The OPC UA Companion Specification for CIP™ simplifies the movement of industrial communication and control data from EtherNet/IP™ devices to OPC UA servers, edge systems, and cloud applications. By standardizing how CIP information is represented in OPC UA, the specification enables cloud gateway management, access to cloud services, and broader use of factory floor data for enterprise-wide monitoring, analysis, and optimization. By connecting EtherNet/IP devices to OPC UA servers, valuable manufacturing and process data becomes readily available at the edge and throughout the enterprise.
EtherNet/IP and CIP Specification Enhancements
ODVA technical working groups will ensure that all pertinent data is able to be understood by OPC UA without any additional work needed by end users. Updates or changes to ODVA specifications, including to support new uses cases and requirements uncovered during the definition and prototyping of the OPC UA Companion Specification for CIP, will be made as needed.
ODVA is enhancing device and network diagnostics and device definitions, including EDS files. In addition, ODVA is developing controller-to-controller communication patterns and standard definitions for representing machines and their data, making it easier to monitor and maintain industrial assets with cloud-based applications.
The OPC UA Companion Specification for CIP maps CIP objects to appropriate OPC UA information models and profiles and vice versa. This enables industrial data to be shared seamlessly between EtherNet/IP™ networks and enterprise systems. By sharing critical information such as device discovery, identity, diagnostics, status, and configuration parameters, the specification simplifies integration with analytics platforms, ERP, MES, and other higher-level applications. This approach reduces engineering effort while ensuring enterprise and IT systems receive industrial data with proper context needed for faster analysis and improved operational insights.
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Whether you’re developing smart devices, modernizing your facility, or implementing an IIoT strategy, EtherNet/IP will help enable secure, interoperable industrial communications.