OPC Foundation announces Stefan Hoppe as new president

November 2, 2018 – The OPC Foundation, a global organization that helps industry vendors maintain interoperability in their manufacturing and automation assets, welcomes Stefan Hoppe as its next president and executive director.

Thomas J. Burke, the former president and executive director, nominated Hoppe as his successor before resigning during the last board of directors meeting. Burke will remain as an officer on the board of directors.

“I believe Stefan Hoppe is the right person for this job as he has clearly demonstrated his commitment and strong leadership on many occasions. I look forward to him advancing the OPC Foundation and its OPC UA technology,” says Burke.

Hoppe is a long-standing member of the control automation industry and the OPC Foundation. As an electrical engineer, he joined Beckhoff in 1995 where he developed OPC classic server and in 2006 the world-first OPC UA server integrated into an embedded controller. In 2008, he initiated and chaired the PLCopen OPC UA Companion working group, whose results are adopted in process industries and discrete manufacturing by multiple international vendors. In 2010 Hoppe was elected president of OPC Foundation Europe. Since 2014, he served as vice-president of the OPC Foundation and a member of the OPC board.

“It is truly an honour to be entrusted with the responsibility and exciting opportunity to lead this incredible global organization towards its full potential,” says Hoppe. “While the OPC Foundation roots come from industrial automation and will always be grounded there, I believe it is our duty to greatly widen our horizons in multiple directions – inside industrial automation but also into other new markets.”

“On behalf of the OPC Foundation, I sincerely thank Thomas Burke for the vision, leadership, and tireless evangelism he provided all these years. It was great to work with Thomas Burke for the last eight years and I appreciate his decision to continue his worldwide OPC UA evangelization and contribution of his deep valued insights and strategic advice.”