Chemical Engineering May 2023 - 38

the initial round ( " Wave 1 " ) of O-PAS
conformance certification are listed
in Table 2.
Preliminary testing of O-PAS conformance
certification Wave 1 has been
underway for about a year with multiple
suppliers. This preliminary testing
is non-binding. It gives the suppliers
the opportunity to vet their products
for conformance, and it gives OPAF
and the Verification Lab the opportunity
to validate the conformance test
cases and testing tools.
O-PAS Conformance Certification
Wave 1 is scheduled to begin operations
in mid-2023.
Indicators of industry adoption
Measuring the effectiveness of innovation
is a notoriously difficult thing
to do and any rigorous discussion of
applying academic theory to realization
of the vision for OPA is beyond
the scope of this article. Nevertheless,
some practical observations
can be made.
TABLE 2. O-PAS CONFORMANCE REQUIREMENT PROFILES
INCLUDED IN CERTIFICATION WAVE 1
Profile
DCP-001
O-PAS Part
Part 7
NET-F-001 Part 4
NET-F-002 Part 4
OCF-001
Part 4
SEC-F-001 Part 2
OSM-002 Part 5
OSM-003 Part 5
Description
Distributed Control Node Platform
Single Ethernet to Ethernet
Single Ethernet Peer to Peer
OPC UA Client/Server
IEC 62443-4-2 Cybersecurity
Redfish (system management) with Baseboard
Management Controller (BMC) chip
Redfish without BMC chip
TABLE 3. OPA PROTOTYPING PROJECTS BY END-USER
COMPANIES
Company*
ExxonMobil
BASF
Georgia Pacific
Saudi Aramco
Dow Chemical
Equinor
Shell
Petronas
Reliance Industries
Notes:
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
✔
Test bed Prototype
✔
✔
Field trial Reference
[5]**
[6]
[7]
✔
[8]**
[9]
[10]**
[11]**
[12]**
[13]
*The author is aware of a tenth major end user with a fully funded, notyet-announced
plan for an OPA prototype
**The reference to the speaker and year of announcement at ARC Forum
conferences. OPA sessions at ARC Forums are chaired by Harry Forbes,
who has been reporting on OPA since its beginning (14). If the reader is
unable to access the referenced presentation or video, synopses can be
found in Ref. 7, 15 and 16.
The Open Group
FIGURE 2. Stakeholder roles in the OPA business ecosystem are diagramed
here
38
After the successful
completion of its OPA
proof-of-concept
project in 2018, ExxonMobil
concluded
that the major challenge
for OPA was
supplier and customer
business model
transformation, not
technology factors.
With this perspective,
let's consider
adoption of O-PAS by
suppliers, end users,
and system integrator
companies as a
key performance indicator.
Seven broad
observations of the
current state of industry
adoption of O-PAS
are made in this section
of the article.
Observation 1.
O-PAS Version 2.1
Final, published on
February 6, 2023, is
the fifth release of the
standard since initial
publication of Version
1.0 in January 2019.
Anecdotally, several
suppliers have
stated that O-PAS
V2.1 (Preliminary and
Final) are sufficiently
specific and complete
enough to be
the basis for product
designs [4].
Observation 2.
OPAF has announced
the startup
of formal O-PAS
Conformance Certification
testing in mid2023
after an almost two-year " soft
opening " with a small group of suppliers
who have submitted early versions
of O-PAS roadmap products
for their own testing and to assist
OPAF with checkouts of the verification
test cases and tools.
Observation 3. At least nine enduser
companies are doing, have
done, or have committed plans for
OPA prototyping projects of varying
degrees of sophistication. Table 3
lists the companies that have publicly
announced OPA projects (Yokogawa
is the system integrator for four of the
projects listed in Table 3).
The largest and most comprehensive
project in Table 3 is ExxonMobil's
field trial. It is the company's
third OPA system-building project.
The first two were a laboratory proofof-concept
and a prototype that
controlled a hydrocarbon processing
pilot plant with 140 I/Os [17]. The
field trial is on a manufacturing facility
in Louisiana with 2,500 I/O and
about 100 control loops. The OPA
system replaces a DCS and several
PLCs. The system is currently in
construction and is scheduled to be
commissioned in 2023.
Observation 4. To help build the
emerging market for OPA, ExxonMobil
established an on-going " Collaboration
Partnership " among the
companies listed in Table 3, as well
as several others, to exchange noncompetitive
information about their
OPA projects. Such reference exchanges
among the early adopter
members of an emerging high-tech
market are essential to build critical
mass and momentum to " cross the
chasm " of market adoption to the
early majority population [18].
Observation 5. Five of the seven
global major distributed control system
(DCS) vendors are active contributors
to the OPA Forum. These
five companies represent 74% ($44.6
billion) of the total worldwide revenue
($59.9 billion) of all seven companies
[19]. While support for OPA is not
prominent in the mainstream marketing
collateral from the five active
contributors, these companies are
publishing information about their
activities and plans for OPA [20-23].
Many of the OPA fundamental
principles and characteristics are
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