Evolution Of Scada In Textile Industries

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

SCADA systems are industrial measurement and control systems consisting of a central host, a Master Terminal Unit (MTU), one or more field data gathering and control units, Remote Terminal Units (RTUs), and a collection of communication technologies that connect between the various units.

SCADA vendors release on major version and one to two additional minor versions once per year. Evolution occurs very promptly so as to take lead of fresh market opportunities, to meet novel necessities of their customers and to take advantage of new technologies.

When the first SCADA systems were introduced to the world in the 1980’s, their main aim was to scrutinize oil pipelines. In its early years, SCADA was not as efficient and was rather costly, and therefore was not favored at that time. Other technologies, for instance Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and innovative Man-Machine Interfaces (MMIs) were preferred to because at a lower cost they enabled similar functions to SCADA systems.

Besides being cost effective for controlling complex systems, PLCs and MMIs offered the following advantages:

They were flexible and could be re-applied to control other systems quickly and easily.

Their computational abilities allowed more sophisticated control.

Their trouble shooting aids make programming easier and reduce downtime.

Their reliable mechanisms make these likely to function for years before failure.

Fortunately, SCADA has changed in the 21st century and is being used across a spread of industries. With SCADA, companies are able to collect and record accurate production data, a feature that PLC’s and MMIs lacked.

As the industrial applications are growing in size, new SCADA versions are now being planned to handle devices and even entire systems as full entitles (classes) that summarize all their detailed characteristics and functionality. In addition, they will support multi-team development.

Communication is an essential component of SCADA technology. In other words, it is the basis for how many things are operated and controlled through this system. Without communication, many systems would fail to be controlled through the use of SCADA, making it a lost cause. There are two major types of communication media in SCADA systems:

Wire-line communications (electrical or optical fiber cable)

Wire-less communications (radio frequency).

Normally, SCADA systems deal with units that cover large geographical area, for example, pipelines and power lines. They traditionally perform data acquisition functions by scanning field inputs at the RTUs, communicating them to an MTU through public or private communication links, and then processing those inputs at the MTU.

The major concern with traditional SCADA systems is that most of these systems are only intended to solve problems of specific vendors. This implies that they are not beneficial on a more universal level. A solution to this issue is to develop standards. The ability for shared operation between different equipment is virtually impossible to achieve without the use of special drives and interfaces.

The internet brings many new features to SCADA systems, which at one point were unavailable, such as, remote accessibility to the plant, information sharing, and software standardization.

The new era of SCADA systems is known as the Internet-Based SCADA. The latter, applies one or more of the Internet technologies which may include communication technologies, software programming technologies, and Web Browser technologies. SCADA products also adopt OPC as a means for communicating internally between the client and server modules.

Unlike the traditional SCADA system, the Internet-based SCADA makes use of internationally accepted standards and technologies to achieve the monitoring and control functions at a lower cost. This results in better interoperability between various system components, easier distribution of information to different applications and external systems, and unification of the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) through the standard Web Browser.

The Internet-based SCADA stores the information and a Web Browser reads or writes the information. The data presentation is usually done using the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). Extensive Markup Language (XML) was created to overcome the shortcomings of HTML and to be used for sending data between the server and the Browser. XML is steadily finding its way into industrial automation and is replacing many of the propriety vendor protocols.

Internet-based SCADA may also include embedded smart devices, such as drives, motors, servos and flow meters which have built-in Web Servers that can transfer data from the plant floor all the way up to the enterprise Web Browsers, thus allowing control, diagnostics, asset management, and supply management.

Advantages of implementing an Internet-based SCADA system:

It is a standards-based system which leverages the existing computer and communications technologies to achieve optimum functionality with minimum cost.

They are generally easy to operate since the browser navigation tools are familiar to anyone who has used the Internet before. Thereby less training requirements required and faster learning curves.

They can reach out to other parts of organization by using the Intranet and Web-based portals, enabling corporate executives and other business decision-makers to aggregate and analyzed data from multiple plants worldwide.

The cost of the system is general lower than that of the traditional system.

Less training, lower preventive and corrective maintenance costs, lower operating cost (as the system architecture and operational philosophy is simpler) are required since the system makes use of standard hardware and software.

Potential benefits of SCADA in textile industries

the benefits from adopting a SCADA system for the control of experimental physics facilities are as follows:

A productive functionality and widespread facilities on development.

The amount of detailed development that needs to be performed by the end-user is restricted. This regards especially with suitable engineering.

Consistency and robustness.

These systems are used for mission critical industrial processes where consistency and performance are foremost. In addition, specific development is performed within a well-established framework that enriches consistency and robustness.

Technical support and maintenance by the vendor.

As for huge collaborations, for instance the CERN LHC experiments, using a SCADA system for their controls safeguards a common framework not only for the development of the specific applications buy also for the operating the detectors. Nevertheless, this facet also depends to a significant extent on appropriate engineering.

ENGINEERING IN TEXTILE INDUSTRIES

Any textile industry adopting a SCADA product for the implementation of a control system waits for significant development and maintenance savings. However, this does not imply that it is a "no effort" operation.

The necessity for appropriate engineering cannot be necessarily emphasized to reduce development effort and to reach a system that conforms to the requirements, that is economical in development and maintenance, consistent and robust.

Examples of engineering activities specific to the use of a SCADA system are:

A library of objects (for instance PLC, device and subsystem) complete with standard object behavior (script, sequences…), graphical interface and associated scripts for animation.

Templates for diverse categories of "panels", e.g. alarms.

Guidelines on how to control, e.g. a device.

A mechanism to prevent contradictory control (if not provided with the SCADA)

Alarm levels, performance to be adapted in case of specific alarms, …