OPCTI offers a variety of hands-on courses that offer people in the industrial, commercial, and military field with a theoretical background on OPC as well as practical hands-on experience that they can immediately apply at their job. Students can use these courses as credit toward their COP designation. The following is a list of the available courses and the dates at which they are offered.
Level 1: OPC & DCOM Diagnostics
Students learn how OPC works and how to troubleshoot and repair DCOM problems. The class covers all the OPC specifications, what they offer and how OPC applications are expected to behave. Then, students learn how to troubleshoot and repair OPC communication problems. Specifically, the workshop enables students to delve into DCOM configuration and diagnostics.
Learn more
Level 2: OPC Security
In OPC Level 1: OPC & DCOM Diagnostics, students learn how OPC works and how to troubleshoot and repair problems. In this hands-on workshop, students use knowledge from previous workshops and learn how to design an OPC communication infrastructure that enables various other systems such as MES, CMMS, ERP, and others, to make use of the available digital information. They learn how to secure their OPC implementation by configuring their firewall, Windows Authentication, Access Control Lists, Windows Services, Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) implementation, and how to continuously monitor the health of their real-time communication system.
Level 3: OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA)
In Level 3, students learn about the newly released OPC Unified Architecture (UA) set of specifications. The hands-on class covers all OPC UA specifications, the various companies who provide OPC UA products, performance and benchmarking tests, as well as the new security model that enhances Classic OPC capabilities.
Level 4: OPC Integration Projects
In the Level 4 course, students get the opportunity to experiment with integration issues as they scale-up their OPC knowledge and examine the additional requirements of large projects. The class examines various case studies and lessons–learned from several high-profile projects so that they can learn from others’ mistakes. Each of the numerous hands-on exercises enables students to learn how to identify problematic areas and foresee potential failures.
OPCTI awards a certificate after students complete each level of training. Those who successfully complete all four levels will receive their Certified OPC Professional (COP) designation.