UAFX AC / CM / Data
| Document | OPC 10000-81 |
|---|---|
| Version | 1.00.04 |
| Published | 2026-07-22 |
| Namespace | http://opcfoundation.org/UA/FX/AC/ |
| Sector | Field exchange |
UAFX (OPC UA Field eXchange) extends OPC UA to controller-to-controller and controller-to-device communication. It ships as three nodesets at 1.00.04: Automation Component, Connection Manager and Data, with AutomationComponentType, FunctionalEntityType and ConnectionManagerType configuring PubSub communication flows between peers.
Where it sits in the stack
UAFX is the field layer of OPC UA rather than a machine model: its technical basis is PubSub over Ethernet Layer 2 UADP with IEEE 802.1 TSN underneath, and its information model describes automation components, the functional entities inside them, and the connections between them. The three released namespaces are http://opcfoundation.org/UA/FX/AC/, .../FX/CM/ and .../FX/Data/, all at 1.00.04 published 2026-07-22. It also ships AutomationML .amlx bundles containing the core, DI, Safety and FX nodesets, which are offline engineering artefacts rather than runtime ones.
The types that matter
| Type | What it carries |
|---|---|
AutomationComponentType | The root type for a UAFX participant: a controller, drive or device that can take part in field-level exchange. FxRoot is where these are found on a server. |
FunctionalEntityType | A functional unit inside an automation component, which is what actually owns the data a connection carries. Connections are made between functional entities, not between whole devices. |
FxAssetType | The asset view of a UAFX participant, tying the field-exchange model back to device identification and asset management. |
ConnectionManagerType | The object that establishes and maintains connections between functional entities. This is the piece that makes UAFX a configuration model rather than only a data model. |
CommunicationFlowConfigurationType | The configuration of one communication flow: what is published, to whom, and with what timing. This is where the PubSub detail lives. |
SubscriberConfigurationType | The receiving side of a flow, describing how a subscriber consumes it. |
PubSubConnectionEndpointModeEnum | The endpoint mode of a connection, distinguishing the roles a participant plays in a flow. |
FxRoot | The standard entry object under which UAFX content is found on a server, the equivalent of DeviceSet for the field-exchange model. |
Using it on a real machine
- Treat UAFX as an engineering task, not a browsing taskUnlike the machinery models, UAFX is about configuring communication between peers. The useful artefacts are the connection configurations, and they are usually produced by a vendor engineering tool rather than typed in by hand.
- Check the network before the modelThe transport is PubSub over Layer 2 UADP with TSN. If the switches and the time synchronisation are not in place, no amount of correct information modelling will produce a working flow.
- Load all three nodesetsAC, CM and Data are separate namespaces at the same version. A client or tool that loads only one cannot resolve the others' types, and the failure looks like a broken model.
- Use the .amlx bundles for offline workThe UAFX directory ships AutomationML packages containing the core, DI, Safety and FX nodesets together, which is how offline engineering tools are meant to consume the model consistently.
- Keep expectations calibratedThe standard is published; deployment is early and largely vendor-pilot, with no open-source implementation to test against. Plan proof-of-concept work with the vendor, not with a demo server.
What it gives you for OEE
Nothing. UAFX is a controller-to-controller communication layer and carries no machine state, no production counters, no downtime reasons and no order context, and no OEE tooling consumes it today. It could in principle carry production data between controllers as PubSub payload, but that payload is application-defined rather than semantically standardised the way MachineTool or PackML content is. For OEE, stay on the client-server side with Machinery, MachineTool, PackML or Weihenstephan, and treat UAFX as something the control engineers may deploy underneath you.
Gotchas
- Three namespaces, one release. AC, CM and Data all read 1.00.04 (2026-07-22) and must be loaded together.
- The capability codes are FXAC and FXCM, and a server can advertise one without the other. Advertising the automation-component model does not mean it can manage connections.
- This is not a replacement for client-server OPC UA. It is a peer-to-peer field layer, and treating it as the next version of what you already run leads to wrong architecture decisions.
- Deployment is early. Version 1.00.02 dates from 2024, 1.00.03 from 2025 and 1.00.04 from 2026, with no open implementation to test against, so treat vendor claims as pilot-stage.
Once the machine speaks a companion spec, the OEE mapping is portable across vendors, which is the point at which analytics stops being a per-machine project.
See Jemba →Last verified 7 September 2026 against OPC UA 1.05.07. Version and publication date read from the released nodeset. OPC UA Connect is an educational resource and is not affiliated with the OPC Foundation.