In 1996, a group of companies developed a first OPC specification to deal with interoperability problems in multi-vendor automation applications, on a structurized way. This was the first step of the OPC Foundation.

Meanwhile more than 300 members join this foundation, including all major manufacturers of products in the field of automation.

The first version of the original OPC specification, august 1996, provided interoperability between devices on different industrial networks from different vendors. They extended this standard with a wide range of opc specifications for interoperability for moving information vertically from the factory floor through the enterprise of multi-vendor systems as well as.

The Factory Automation Lab of the KdG started informal OPC interoperability testing in 1999 and became a member of the OPC Foundation in 2002.