SCADA, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, comprises both hardware and software and is used to monitor and control industrial processes locally or at remote locations. SCADA systems collect, process, and display real-time production data, interact directly with plant floor devices such as sensors, instruments, valves and equipment, pumps, etc. through local HMI software, and/or standard PC stations then record events into a log file.
An Industrial IoT platform collects, normalizes, and stores data from all plant floor devices and systems locally. The edge gateways provided on the plant floor with ready-to-use data power the real-time analytics and share the data securely with any cloud, enterprise, or machine learning system for more strategic data initiatives. A complete IIoT platform can run any application, machine learning model, and service at the edge, delivering the OT data intelligence needed to improve and optimize plant operations.
In order to be competitive in the market, more and more companies are investing in smart manufacturing and so the need for both SCADA and IIoT is becoming clear. Use cases have evolved from simple machine monitoring to using data intelligence to make predictions and create models that drive operational improvement at scale.
