Catena-X Automotive Network e. V. and the OPC Foundation reported Aug. 19 that they’re collaborating to accelerate standardized, cross-company, data sharing across manufacturing industries. Their partnership focuses on supporting upcoming the European Union’s (EU regulation requiring a Digital Product Passport (DPP) by 2027, which demands trusted, machine-readable product data across value chains.
Catena-X reports that it’s the first open, collaborative data space for the automotive industry, enabling sovereign, standardized data-sharing, based on interoperable infrastructure and semantic templates. Well-known in the process industries, OPC Foundation developed and support OPC Unified Architecture (UA), the internationally recognized standard for secure and semantically enriched information exchange.
By aligning OPC UA’s modelling capabilities with Catena-X’s governance framework and cloud-based infrastructure, the two organizations aim to simplify data integration, reduce reporting errors, and enhance compliance with emerging regulatory demands like DPP.
Catena-X and OPC plan to cooperate in four areas:
- Semantic integration by combining OPC UA’s information modelling and Catena-X’s semantic templates to create a comprehensive repository of interoperable, machine-readable models. This technology backbone will also support automated DPP generation from production data.
- Open-source reference implementation by jointly developing and providing open-source reference implementations for key dataspace and interoperability components, enabling straightforward integration of OPC UA-based systems into Catena-X’s data ecosystem.
- Reference architecture alignment by aligning OPC Foundation’s Cloud Initiative reference architecture with Catena-X’s dataspace architecture to enable streamlined deployment from the plant-floor to the supply chain.
- Industrial ecosystem enablement by empower companies to leverage existing OPC UA tools and infrastructure to meet emerging regulatory requirements, particularly DPP, while reducing integration costs and accelerating time-to-compliance.
“The OPC Foundation provides rich, secure and proven access to standardized information—an essential foundation for digital transformation,” says Oliver Ganser, board chair at Catena-X. “By linking this data to Catena-X’s ecosystem, we turn standardized information into cross-company value. This collaboration benefits both ecosystems and marks a key step toward end-to-end data chains, at scale, and cross-industry solutions like DPP.”
Stefan Hoppe, president and executive director of OPC Foundation, continued, "This collaboration brings together two strong ecosystems: OPC UA, as a globally accepted standard for industrial interoperability, and Catena-X, as a pioneering data-space initiative for the automotive industry. The combination of proven standardization and sovereign data exchange provides companies with a practical bridge from the shopfloor to the cloud. Catena-X contributes significant added value—particularly in meeting regulatory requirements such as the Digital Product Passport and enabling cross-company use of data models, which is also a key pillar of the OPC Foundation’s Cloud Initiative. Together, we are building a robust foundation for sustainable and efficient digitalization."
