Accessing and Interpreting OPC UA Event Traces based on Semantic Process Descriptions

Abstract: The analysis of event data from production systems is the basis for many applications associated with Industry 4.0. However, heterogeneous and disjoint data is common in this domain. As a consequence, contextual information of an event might be incomplete or improperly interpreted which results in suboptimal analysis results. This paper proposes an approach to access a production systems' event data based on the event data's context (such as the product type, process type or process parameters). The approach extracts filtered event logs from a database system by combining: 1) a semantic model of a production system's hierarchical structure, 2) a formalized process description and 3) an OPC UA information model. As a proof of concept we demonstrate our approach using a sample server based on OPC UA for Machinery Companion Specifications.