SCADA

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition or shortly called ‘SCADA’ is a combination of both hardware and software components that allow industry personnel to supervise and control plants both locally as well as remotely.

A SCADA system entails a centralised system that helps in monitoring and controlling the entire sites that range from an industrial plant to several complexes of plants disseminated over a large geographical area.

Moreover, many industries have adopted SCADA systems due to increased convenience provided by this automation control system. Industries have achieved increased levels of efficiency in their complex industrial operations via this technology. Concerning the benefits of the SCADA system, operators and controllers can now make informed decisions based on real-time information about plants that can be accessed from anywhere across the world.

Overall, the SCADA system offers multifarious benefits over manual labour. For instance, stable backups of data, better traceability, redundancy adjustment, secure alarm system, enhanced productivity, reduced human errors, and so on. SCADA systems has also led industries to boost worker’s safety as they follow pre-defined industrial processes. Additionally, the comprehensive statistics provided by SCADA systems, industries tend to enhance their product quality and prevent unexpected operational failures.

Considering the structural design of the SCADA system, it starts with RTUs (Remote Terminal Units) and PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers). RTUs and PLCs are basically microprocessors that help in communicating and interacting with these devices. Furthermore, this communication data is transmitted to SCADA computers from these microprocessors.

After reaching the SCADA computers or networked devices such as end-user computers, HMIs, and servers, the software helps in interpreting and displaying the collected data. This allows SCADA operators to analyse and react to the system events accordingly. For instance, the SCADA system collects the information that a leakage on a pipeline has occurred. It then transfers this information to the system and alerts the system simultaneously that the pipeline has been leaking. The information of this event is displayed in an organised and logical manner so that problem could be managed efficiently by utilising this real-time information.

This automation control system examines, gathers, and processes the real-time data and thereby helping in complex operations that are deemed to be beyond human control.

Before the development of SCADA, industrial plant personnel used to monitor and control complex processes through pushbuttons, selector switches, and dials to get analogue signals. To do so, industrial plants required personnel on site to manage and control production processes.

Now, with the help of the SCADA system, many industrialists can assess and collect real-time data about complex production processes. Besides, the SCADA system allows them to manage and monitor alarms, which help them in developing automatic control response. Also, SCADA software can log a large amount of data for historical purposes.

Industrialists now can interact with pumps, motors, sensors, valves, and many other mechanical processes through HMI (Human-Machine Interface). Basically, HMI software assists interaction with these field devices.