Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems have claimed a secure place in industry. They have long been considered the most effective method for interfacing machines and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), logging data and alarming operators of issues, providing quantitative measurements of important processes, and determining trends.
However, as LeaderMES CEO Amir Aloni commented back in August, SCADA is built on the premise that communication is one-way; you have a firewall to take care of security problems and this is only applicable to one-way communication protocols. With this, data is collected and shared but nothing can be fed back into the machine. For two-way connectivity to be possible, one of the prerequisites of IoT, access from the cloud to the device is needed.
SCADA or the cloud
As a result, SCADA’s place in the information technology hierarchy is being reconsidered in the age of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Tom Craven, vice president of product strategy at RRAMAC Connected Systems, commented in a recent article for IIoT Today that: “Most SCADA packages include web and mobile interfaces and tout these features as their IIoT or Industry 4.0 solution. However, one of the benefits of leveraging the IIoT may actually be the elimination of the traditional SCADA layer.”
Craven goes on to highlight other issues with current SCADA technologies, including the requirement to regularly upgrade to keep up with the latest operating system updates and the need for experienced programmers to maintain systems.
Based on this assessment of SCADA technologies, RRAMAC promotes its EdgeScout Cloud Based Remote Monitoring system, which uses a local edge node device to communicate with the local control system and push data securely to the cloud. In the cloud, this data is stored and is used to provide custom web dashboards, email and text notifications, historical trends and custom reports, and connectivity to other enterprise software systems. It runs many similar tasks that a locally installed SCADA system would perform. While there is still a localised control point at the machine, user interface technology is freed of the need to store data or produce reports and so functionality, ease of use and efficiency can be improved.
Operating at the edge
However, other industry experts suggest that storing and analysing all production data in only a centralised cloud-based location is not the right direction for industry to move in. Industrial automation, SCADA and IoT technology provider OAS explains: “With typical network cloud systems, data is pushed up to a server and then pulled back down by clients. This works well for […] non-critical applications but is not a good design for real-time IIoT data. If data does not reside at the source, the data quality may be unreliable. Issues with the freshness, accuracy of data, and speed of delivery are potentially impacted when using a cloud architecture.”
An alternative to moving all data storage and analysis to the cloud is therefore to evolve SCADA systems with IIoT communication in mind. Co-founder and CEO of IoT.nxt, Nico Steyn recently commented in an article on the company’s website: “IoT is what’s going to bring SCADA systems to the next level. Instead of fighting against each other, the two technologies can instead integrate to push industry even closer to the edge.”
The combination of SCADA and IIoT can be looked at as the transitioning from the traditional SCADA model towards edge-computing, in combination with cloud solutions. This edge-cloud model is outlined in the 2018 paper ‘The edge cloud: A holistic view of communication, computation and caching’, which focuses on the importance of “next generation (5G) communication networks” in creating a “communication infrastructure that will enable new business opportunities in diverse sectors, or verticals.”
Media network, The Verge provides a simplified definition of edge computing as being “computing that’s done at or near the source of the data, instead of relying on the cloud at one of a dozen data centres to do all the work.” That sounds a lot like a definition of SCADA, but edge computing enables secure two-way communication with the cloud and is set up to ensure the best use of processing power.
For example, an operator working on a weaving machine could use edge computing to view basic data and analytic information – much like a SCADA system is used. The essential data is available to them at the source and without concern for connectivity to the cloud. However, that data is shared with the cloud platform and there it is utilised for more resource-intensive analytics and creation of business logic.
This edge-cloud system has already been implemented by a number of man-made fibre manufacturers using Oerlikon technology. At the forthcoming OpenStack Summit Berlin 2018, Mario Arcidiacono, project lead for Oerlikon's Edge Computing initiative, Christoph Streit, CEO and co-founder of ScaleUp Technologies, and Christian Berendt, CEO of Betacloud Solutions GmbH, will present on ‘Enabling a Secure Industry 4.0 transition for the Textile Industry with OpenStack based Edge Clouds’.
OpenStack is a free, open-source software platform for cloud computing, mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service, whereby virtual servers and other resources are made available to customers. The presentation at the Berlin Summit will focus on how a secure and private OpenStack based edge cloud platform for the textile industry has been built by Oerlikon and its partners and will include a case study of this in action at a textile production factory in Vietnam.
