Peter Lutz (Dipl.-Ing.) studied electrical engineering at the University of Stuttgart with a focus on computer science and communication networks. He then worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Facilities (ISW) at the University of Stuttgart in the field of open control systems. Afterwards, he became full-time managing director of Sercos International e.V., responsible for the coordination of worldwide activities for the automation bus Sercos. In April 2019 he took over the position as director of the OPC Foundation's FLC Initiative with the goal of establishing OPC UA as a globally accepted standard for field level communications in the factory and process industries.

In November 2018, the OPC Foundation has launched the Field Level Communications (FLC) initiative to extend OPC UA down to the field level including TSN enabled Ethernet networks. This will advance the OPC Foundation providing vendor independent end-to-end interoperability into field level devices for all relevant industry automation use-cases. The OPC Foundation vision of becoming the worldwide industrial interoperability standard is advanced by integrating field devices and the shop floor. This presentation is a report on the ongoing work of the FLC initiative, giving insights to the status, roadmap and technical concept of OPC UA FLC.