In the future, we could see SCADA projections onto a pair of safety glasses or a virtual reality (VR) headset
What does the next
generation of SCADA
have to offer?
Thirty years ago industry pundits were
predicting the death of SCADA as a
technology, saying it would have no
place in the plants and factories of the
future. But contrary to this the technology
has constantly evolved in line with user
requirements, and indeed continues to
evolve.
Paul Hurst, MD of Products4Automation
(P4A) vendors of the Movicon SCADA
Suite explains what the next generation of
SCADA will bring to the party.
Despite all the talk of 'lights out factories',
there will always be a need for people to
interact with machines and processes,
to visualise operations and respond to
performance indicators. Currently this
usually happens locally, but there is a trend
towards more and more remote access.
Going forward, remote operation may
become the norm.
We are already seeing SCADA beginning to
move from PC screens to remote devices.
In the future, we could see projection
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onto a pair of safety glasses or the use of
a virtual reality (VR) headset. Putting our
imaginations into overdrive, maybe one
day SCADA info will be delivered straight
to the operator's cortex. But for now the
need is to put information on a screen
and allow operators to navigate through
it and use the interface to make control
adjustments.
What will define the next generation of
SCADA then, and how will it continue to
drive the evolution of plant integration
and process control? In short, the key
innovations of this next generation SCADA
are how it goes about collecting data and
storing it so that it can be aggregated,
processed and transmitted to the screen
for display.
The latest SCADA products are platforms
with a suite of modules and options,
rather than fixed hard-coded proprietary
programs. This configuration makes
them very flexible and scalable. Further
we are seeing important innovations in
communications and networking, cross-
platform compatibility, database flexibility
and visualisation.
A key driver for modern communications
and networking is OPC UA (open platform
control, unified architecture), and
next generation SCADA products will
increasingly be based on client/server
architectures that use information models
defined by OPC UA standards, exploiting
the WCF (Windows Communication
Foundation) technology in the
communications infrastructure. Not only
does this drive new levels of openness
in the way SCADA is integrated with the
plant automation and IT infrastructure,
it also massively simplifies the way
communications are established with
control devices.
OPC UA includes a large number of
I/O drivers, so is capable of managing
protocols of all the most widely used
automation devices.
This vendor neutral approach also extends
to cross-platform compatibility, with next