At this year’s Modern Manufacturing Expo, Meighan Heard, executive director of corporate and commercial at Mitsubishi Electric, will highlight how bringing 'invisible data' into the light will help companies unlock the power of their data to drive sustainable solutions.
In a manufacturing setting, accessing all the information needed to make informed decisions to run efficient and sustainable operations can be challenging, as the data can be stored across different systems, making it time-consuming and costly to analyse.
“The core focus of the session is the benefits of SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) – a solution that makes the ‘invisible visible’, and lets users visualise, analyse and optimise complex processes in real-time,” Heard said.
SCADA is an industrial control system comprised of both hardware and software components for the purpose of gathering, analysing and displaying real-time data from devices to monitor and control industrial processes.
“These systems are fundamental in allowing industrial organisations to understand their processes, so they can make data-driven decisions for optimising operations,” Heard added.
The hardware component of SCADA has sensors to capture operational data, which is then translated by PLCs (programmable logic controller) or RTUs (remote terminal unit) for better operational understanding, before being sent to HMIs (human machine interfaces) to be transformed into operational visualisations.
The visualisations take the form of gauges, data charts, tables, alarm notifications, and trends that can be interpreted by operators to make informed data-driven decisions.
The primary benefits of SCADA systems for manufacturers include:
- Enabling organisations to acquire data and transforming it into useful information, which is crucial to eliminating data silos and getting the most value out of historical data;
- Allowing companies to track and record the data/events, and thus streamline operational contextualisation, and how it relates to business or supply chain data;
- Providing substantial time, work and operational cost savings; and
- Contributing to sustainability initiatives from the valuable insight these systems offer in managing and running energy-efficient industrial factories and processes.
The final primary benefit of SCADA systems – its contribution to manufacturing sustainability initiatives – is a crucial part of reducing environmental impact, and helping Australia meet its sustainability goals.
“Mitsubishi Electric’s SCADA software is part of our ICONICS Suite, which offers scalable energy sustainability solutions,” said Heard.
“These solutions not only drive positive environmental outcomes, but also utilise energy data analyses to increase operational efficiency and reduce operational costs.”
Typical energy management solutions can tell a user that there is something wrong with the plant, but not what to do about it.
However, according to Heard, ICONICS’ Fault Detection and Diagnostics technology uniquely pinpoints the exact location, and even the specific piece of equipment that is malfunctioning or performing inefficiently. It offers a lot of possible causes, ranked by probability, to reduce maintenance repair times.
“This capability helps customers reduce energy costs, cut consumption, curtail carbon emissions, and significantly streamline facilities maintenance,” said Heard.
While wide-scale automation offers manufacturing a host of benefits, many end-users are struggling to connect their various IOT-connected devices, and to see how the data generated from these devices can work together in unison.
SCADA systems can offer a holistic, data-driven overview into a manufacturer’s processes. It is cloud-enabled and compatible with various devices, enabling a user to connect back to control systems for enhanced information visualisation.
However, Heard stressed that not all SCADA systems are created equal.
“Some solutions are definitely more advanced than others, and a top SCADA system should be built on 64-bit technology, which will allow you to access faster processors with a higher memory capacity,” she explained.
Heard said that the top 10 features manufacturers should look for when selecting a SCADA system are that it:
- Leverages universal connectivity to allow for connection to any data in a system from anywhere;
- Has the ability for high-performance data capture (log data at a speed greater than 100,000 tags per second);
- Enables rich, powerful 2D and 3D visualisation;
- Offers live, configurable and self-service KPI dashboards.
- Contains mission-critical redundancy;
- Offers fault analytics and energy monitoring;
- Comes with enterprise-wise advanced alarm and event management systems;
- Offers integrated SMS and email alerts;
- Is scalable, cloud-ready and modular; and
- Offers customisable project development tools.
“Above all, your SCADA system should help you streamline your operations, and allows you to make real-time, data-driven and informed decisions,” Heard concluded.
Mitsubishi will be holding sessions at the Modern Manufacturing Expo, held on 20-21 September at Sydney Showground, of which it is a sponsor partner.
