Actualites - Data intelligence with SCADA software

Data intelligence with SCADA software

Expert article

There is no doubt: the explosion of data is a major technological challenge for companies. Connected machines, PLCs , sensors of all kinds... all of them produce a large amount of data. The challenge for manufacturers is to manage and leverage this large volume of data to increase their operational efficiency. Marc Baudin, AREAL's CEO, talks about this subject and its impact on the Topkapi SCADA software solution.

1/ What is your vision of data intelligence? 

Technological progress makes it easy to instrument more and more things, everything becomes measurable. Where cable had to be run to acquire a measurement at great cost, today there are many solutions based on autonomous sensors that provide almost continuous information. 
At the same time, operating costs are rising sharply, whether due to the price of energy, raw materials or maintenance. It is therefore essential to instrument the installations to determine the best saving and optimization factors. 
The result: more information or data to process. Since humans are not able to handle such large volumes of data by themselves, they turn to technology. 
For me, data intelligence refers directly to the process of exploring, analyzing and understanding this data. It is the tools and interfaces that enable trends, correlations and deviations to be extracted, which will enable better management of systems, targeting potential savings, carrying out simulations and also training users. 
 

2/ What part does SCADA software play in data intelligence? 

Basically, the role of a SCADA is the acquisition, processing and display of data from a process to enable its control. It just plain makes sense that SCADA is primarily involved in these three main functions for large amounts of data generated by increasing instrumentation.
Furthermore, it is essential to process the acquired data in order to present it to human operators in a comprehensible and useful way. SCADA is the ideal solution for this! At the heart of this data it synthesizes it to provide simple and uniform information to the control system. 
It therefore makes a lot of sense for SCADA to be enriched with functionalities to extract all the intelligence from the acquired data. 
 

3/ And what about Topkapi, how is the solution evolving?  

For a long time now, Topkapi has had the tools to acquire and process a large volume of data, often heterogeneous, from multiple sensors and PLCs. Its openness to IIoT via new communication standards allows independence in the choice of sensors used according to their relevance and not to technical interoperability obligations. Its integrated calculation engine enables key indicators to be compiled and summary reports to be generated.
Version 6.2 adds a new brick to this edifice with the "Dataviz" module, which adds new presentation functions and additional calculations to the capabilities described above. It allows users to explore the data collected and formatted by Topkapi to focus on its operational indicators. 
This module allows not only to present dashboards configured during the configuration of the application, but also to create new ones during exploitation, whatever the operating terminal used (server, fat client, web-based thin client). 
This adaptability saves time and efficiency everyday to meet the operator's business needs.