The OPC Foundation is dedicated to ensuring interoperability in automation by creating and maintaining open specifications that standardise the communication of acquired process data, alarm and event records, historical data, and batch data to multi-vendor enterprise systems and between production devices. Production devices include sensors, instruments, PLCs, RTUs, DCSs, HMIs, historians, trending subsystems, and alarm subsystems used in the process industry, manufacturing, and in acquiring and transporting oil, gas, and minerals.

OPC provides specifications and technology targeted towards Microsoft operating systems and applications enabling multivendor interoperability across Microsoft systems. OPC provides enabling technology initially enabling all industry assets of manufacturing, and over the last 15 years has provided the enabling technology for interoperability across all horizontal and vertical domains.