Open controller architecture OSEC-II: architecture overview and prototype systems

The Open System Environment (OSE) consortium, which consists of 18 major companies and a public research institute in Japan from various industries as of February 1997, has been organized to establish, demonstrate, and standardize an open architecture for easy implementation of high-value-add functions based on information technology in controllers of factory automation (FA) machines. This paper gives an overview of the OSEC-II (Open System Environment for Controllers, Version 2) architecture released by the consortium in August 1996, and reports on some prototype systems based on the architecture.