How to Set Up OPC UA Connectivity for Legacy Manufacturing Equipment
Your factory runs on equipment that was installed before the iPhone existed. The PLCs controlling your injection molders speak Modbus RTU. Your CNC machines communicate via Ethernet/IP. That packaging line from 2004? It has a proprietary serial protocol that only one retired engineer understood.
Welcome to the reality of brownfield manufacturing — where 85% of installed equipment predates modern IIoT connectivity standards, and replacing it would cost millions you don't have.
The good news: OPC UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture) was designed to solve exactly this problem. The bad news: most guides skip the messy details of actually connecting equipment that wasn't designed to be connected.
This guide covers what actually works on real factory floors — not in vendor demo environments.