OTTO Industrial API enables connected industrial automation

Mar. 9, 2018 – OTTO Motors says its new OTTO Industrial API helps achieve a fully connected and optimized smart factory, by addressing the challenge of machine-to-machine communication and full industrial automation by simplifying the process of connecting equipment and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to OTTO.

As a collaborating company with Inductive Automation, OTTO Motors integrated Ignition software as part of the Industrial API architecture. Ignition is a software platform with a feature set that includes the translation of different protocols to the ones needed to speak to PLCs within manufacturing environments, therefore contributing to a closed loop automation system, it explains.
 
“The industry has long struggled with the challenge of connecting industrial machines built by different companies,” said Simon Drexler, director of product, OTTO Motors. “Pieces of equipment from the same company generally communicate easily with each other but creating a connection that enables data to be exchanged across products from different vendors can be complicated, costly, and time consuming – and sometimes impossible. This problem is, at best, a barrier to attaining the benefits of a smart factory that many companies aspire to. At worst, it’s a severe limitation on productivity.”
 
Available now, the OTTO Industrial API connects self-driving vehicles to existing automation systems and processes, and aims to provide faster integration of OTTO with robust and standardized integrations with industry-standard software and protocols. Inductive Automation describes the Ignition server software creates total system integration for the plant floor.