Two years ago, a group of companies from seemingly disparate industries met in San Francisco to discuss the possibility of creating an open standard for process automation. With 30 different companies in attendance at that first meeting, the group quickly recognized the commonalities among them and the need for more flexible manufacturing solutions. Soon after, they launched the Open Process Automation™ Forum (OPAF) under the auspices of The Open Group® to begin work toward developing a standard that would address the common pain points manufacturers in process automation face today.
