What Is OPA? Part 5

Show notes

This episode wraps up The OT Crowd’s What Is OPA? series by focusing on whether OPA is real in practice and how to evaluate it for your own environment. Jarie and David walk through deployed examples, the business case for adoption, and the key questions teams should ask before choosing an OPA-based system.

In this episode, they cover the shift from concept to commercial reality, including lighthouse deployments, field use, and the practical reasons standards-based automation matters. They also explain how to assess component choice, system ownership, and long-term extensibility.

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Key topics

• David explains that OPA is no longer vaporware or slideware — it has been developed since 2016 and has reached commercial deployment.
• The discussion highlights a lighthouse project that converted an existing DCS system with about 1,000 I/O across three I/O rooms, including reactor trains, raw materials, finished product handling, waste treatment, a flare, and safety systems.
• Jarie and David note that ExxonMobil declared the lighthouse a commercial reality, making OPA a real project option rather than a research experiment.
• They also reference the Anchorage Chemical Terminal project in Baton Rouge, where COPA won a six-vendor commercial bid using an OPA-style RFP.
• David shares another example from Texas A&M University’s small modular reactor research, where a COPA system supported an open, interoperable architecture.
• OPA can support both PLC-scale and DCS-scale implementations, including control, HMI, historian, alarming, and full SCADA capabilities.
• Jarie and David discuss why OPA aims to bring advanced control, optimization, and data analysis inside the system instead of bolting them on outside the firewall.
• They emphasize OPA’s standards-based interoperability, cybersecurity, and ability to add capabilities without ripping and replacing the whole system.
• The episode closes with practical adoption questions: Can you choose the components? Do you own and support the system? Can you grow it over time without replacing it?
• Jarie also previews the next phase of the podcast, which will include guests and a broader discussion of the business case for OPA adoption.

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Welcome back and setup for the final OPA episode
• 01:16 — OPA is real, not vaporware or slideware
• 01:47 — Lighthouse project: converting a DCS system in a real plant
• 02:43 — ExxonMobil declares the lighthouse a commercial option
• 03:12 — Anchorage Chemical Terminal and the COPA bid win
• 03:41 — Texas A&M small modular reactor research example
• 04:38 — OPA can scale from PLC to DCS and beyond
• 05:09 — Bringing advanced control and analytics inside the system
• 06:07 — Why cybersecurity and interoperability are foundational
• 07:30 — Questions smart end users should ask before adopting OPA
• 08:22 — Choosing components, owning the system, and supporting it
• 10:50 — Swapping vendors without waiting for one roadmap
• 11:51 — Growing capability without ripping and replacing
• 12:49 — Plug-and-play expansion with standard protocols and models
• 13:40 — OPA ecosystem and the role of CPLANE and COPA
• 14:56 — Building the business case for OPA adoption
• 15:25 — Where the podcast goes next

Notable quotes

“It is real. It is in production. It has to make a company money.”

“The answer’s never no.”

“You need more compute, you do it, you change it. You need more I/O, you add it.”

Next: guest episodes — coming soon.