OPEN PROCESS AUTOMATION
HOW AND WHERE TO START
Mark Hammer, OPA Product Manager, Yokogawa Electric Corporation
Open Process Automation presents a transformative opportunity for enterprises seeking to modernise their
PROCESS TECHNOLOGY FEB/MAR 2026
industrial process automation systems.
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ndustrial process automation has evolved significantly over the years, playing a pivotal role in improving operational efficiency, safety, cost reductions, and ensuring product quality. Traditional automation systems, however, often relied on proprietary, closed architectures, leading to vendor lock-in, interoperability challenges, and limited adaptability to changing business needs often required for enterprises to expand or progress. Open
Process Automation (OPA) seeks to address these issues by promoting open standards, modular design, and interoperability. Organisations looking to embrace OPA will need to address critical but navigable steps to ensure a smooth transition.
WHAT CAN THE OPA FRAMEWORK OFFER? The first step for an enterprise is to comprehend the OPA fundamentals. The OPA standards framework consists of protocols,
data models and reference architectures that enable interoperability between automation ecosystem components. This understanding is crucial for decision-makers to grasp how OPA can align with their operational goals and requirements. It is also important to know how OPA is charting a path forward with scalability, security and portability.1 With OPA, a company can run process control logic in all parts of the system architecture, deployed on the hardware of its choice, since OPA is a software-defined automation system (SDAS). Knowing how OPA functions allows companies to make informed decisions on architectures and deployment strategies.
ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT SYSTEMS As part of the OPA journey, an enterprise should conduct a comprehensive assessment PROCESSONLINE.COM.AU