What does a next-generation SCADA system look like?
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are invaluable tools for the monitoring and automation of assets and processes. Already well-proven in manufacturing plants and oil refineries, the adoption of SCADA has recently been particularly strong in sectors such as water and wastewater treatment, power generation and transmission, and natural gas. Use is widespread, but integrators tasked with implementing SCADA are faced with increasing complexity, the need to seamlessly integrate a broader range of systems and data, the growing threat of cyberattacks and a much larger number of assets that are spread over a bigger geographic area. At the same time, many SCADA systems are still based on old technology and can’t rise to meet the new challenges.
As critical as SCADA is today, how does a new-generation SCADA system have to perform to fulfill the requirements of todays’ users and OEMs? First and foremost, SCADA systems must help the customer to improve operations, by optimizing the plant, identifying issues and areas of potential improvement, and helping it run more smoothly. To achieve those goals, end users are demanding greater functionality and the opportunity to truly maximize the use of the available data.
From a project implementation standpoint, new systems are usually needed “yesterday,” placing pressure on project execution. Delivery times are often squeezed as companies want to make rapid improvements to remain profitable. It is essential that existing systems and equipment can be integrated into the SCADA system. That requires communication with legacy hardware, usually with OPC connectivity and native drivers that support older equipment. Implementing new solutions quickly can be especially challenging when there is a loss of in-house control system expertise at the customer organization. It also means that any solution needs to be very easy to use and maintain. End users also require greater flexibility from the SCADA system, with the ability to implement projects in phases and expand and add equipment, systems and functions in the future. That requires the SCADA system to be modular and able to grow over time, while also having long-term support and backwards compatibility for upgrades that extend its lifecycle. Customers want to minimize investment risk, which means looking beyond the initial software price and considering the longer term. This requires systems to offer large graphic libraries, customizable reports and a familiar programming language to enable easier amends and updates over the life of the system.
For many years, Emerson’s scalable SCADA systems have been helping our customers, especially in remote oil and gas applications, to improve productivity, enterprise integration, reliability and profitability. The acquisition of the Progea Group this year has expanded Emerson’s capabilities in terms of SCADA solutions, plant analytics and industrial visualization. Providing automation engineers with easier access to modular solutions for supervision, HMI, control, historian, MES and industrial analysis will help our customers improve overall equipment efficiency and accelerate their digital transformation journey. Central to this is the Movicon.NExTTM SCADA software platform, which has been designed to expand the use of traditional SCADA/MES/HMI technologies by offering greater application flexibility and ease of implementation.
DevelopmentFaster development is aided by an intuitive development environment with powerful wizards, symbol libraries and toolboxes. Movicon.NExT is based on XML file and this allows editing, which offers the possibility of virtually unlimited customization to the project. Knowing every customer application has unique challenges and demands that need to be met, Emerson can provide the support needed to streamline design engineering and ensure projects remain on track and the solution is fit for purpose.
To simplify implementation, the Movicon.NExT software provides exceptional openness, which supports the integration of a broad range of systems. Fundamental to this is native connectivity to any OPC UA-based device or application. The OPC UA communication protocol is used widely to enable different systems to connect with each other without the need to covert data, use gateways or translate from one language to another. This ensures legacy fieldbus and Ethernet-based equipment can all be seamlessly integrated into the SCADA solution.
Movicon.NExT is a modular solution designed to be scalable and easy to expand. The software follows a “plug-in” concept, which helps to maximize interoperability and enables new functional modules to be easily integrated. These off-the-shelf function modules help integrators meet customer applications requirements, but also reduce project engineering time and risk. The Pro.Energy function module, for example, allows the user to connect to different types of meters to measure and monitor energy consumption in real time, historicize data for analysis, optimization and energy efficiency improvements that help companies to reduce costs and meet environmental sustainability targets.
Thanks to its modularity, it is possible to divide applications within a project into different parts. This enables hardware resources to be efficiently distributed and applications segmented, enabling different levels of security to be implemented. Various authentication models ensure security of data management, user access and password management.
Greater functionalityImproved supervision helps the end user to make performance improvements in terms of productivity, reliability, energy efficiency and safety. Movicon.NExT helps operators to visualize operations, identify trends, and analyze and interpret data in a simple and fast way. Modern graphics and user interfaces provided by Movicon.NExT help to simplify operating procedures, increase operator efficiency, make it easier to identify issues that normally would lead to downtime or underperformance, and make improved decisions. Alarm and event configurations can be managed and customized to provide operators with helpful and accurate information and intuitive event management.
Improved decision-making is aided by powerful tools for analyzing and reporting historical data. Trends, charts, tables, data analysis and an integrated report designer offer sophisticated data analysis solutions that can be deployed locally or over the web. There is also the ability to access all database types to extract data and represent them graphically in different charts. A report designer allows reports to be created and managed locally or over the web, and web dashboards can also be used for data analysis with HTML5 web clients. Data archiving allows operators to perform chronological and statistical analysis, which are indispensable for improving operations. Data managed by the software platform is efficiently recorded using both historian and data logger technology. Data are recorded in SQL Server format, but database connectors are available for Oracle, My SQL databases and cloud computing such as Microsoft Azure.
A good example of how Movicon.NExT has helped both system integrator and end user can be found at Italian oil lubricant manufacturing facility based in Milan. The company needed a new SCADA system to supervise its production and to improve productivity and efficiency. Softec Srl, a Parma-based company that develops software for managing automated systems was tasked with implementing the SCADA software. The production line consists of a number of different machines, each managed by a separate PLC. These were all connected to the Movicon.NExT software, which was designed to display the real-time operating status of each machine, durations of various states on histograms and productivity flow trends using charts. The status and levels of silos in the product supply department are also displayed and logged. The SCADA is in continuous communication with the PLC data concentrator and historically logs a major part of the data on a SQL database using data loggers. The recorded data includes produced container count, machine status (stockpile, rejects, downtimes, etc.), and alarms causing machine downtime. All this information is processed in real time and displayed in reports created on request by the operator using predefined filters. Data collected is then used by Movicon.NExT to calculate availability, performance and quality indexes (OEE, KPI and downtime). A data analysis feature allows managers to quickly identify critical areas of the productivity process that need improving to obtain better system efficiency and productivity. The fact that the software system is centralized and connected to all machines has made it easy to control the whole production process from one workstation. Within a few months of using Movicon.NExT, the manufacturer was able to pinpoint the major problems causing production losses on the line, and the production phases during which downtime occurred most frequently.
Greatly satisfied with the results, the company decided to expand the project, enabled by the modularity and scalability of the software. From a development perspective, Softec found Movicon.NExT to be very easy to configure and use. Furthermore, the VB.net scripts allowed them to save a lot of time by being able to recover and use parts of previously written code for other applications.
What demands does your application place on a SCADA system?