All About Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition

Many of you might be like me and when they first heard about a supervisory control and data acquisition or otherwise known as SCADA, you might not even know what that does or is. Those of you who work within factories probably know all about this, but for those who aren't as up to date on factory jobs, they might not know what this is all about. I know that I was clueless. For all you clueless people out there, let me help you learn about this thing that many are unfamiliar with.

Now, those who are familiar with a factory know that there have to be different systems that collect data. They call these a control system. What a supervisory control and data acquisition is just an industrial control system. There are many parts to these. When they work together, they are all there to collect data on how things are run. It is also normally run by a computer system.

There are three main types of SCADA. The first are industrial processes. Another one is infrastructure processes. Last, there are facility processes. They are a different control system for different parts of factories. Typically, a SCADA has main components. These also help to collect data. They call these subsystems and include:

• human-machine interface
• supervisory system
• remote terminal units
• programmable logic controller
• A communication infrastructure.

With these control systems, factories are run more economically efficiently. They don't have to hire as many people. The SCADA allows fewer people to monitor the productions at the factories. Most things that go wrong in the factories can now be taken care of by the computer technicians that these places hire. This way they are paying one person rather than a number of individuals. This is done through newer networking technology that almost all factories are going to. These systems are very up to date and very in depth as to what they do and how they work. This just gives those of you who don't exactly know about it a brief interdiction to this concept. So, if you are interested in how this works, there has been much written about it.

Sturat enjoys writing articles on topics like SCADA and what is SCADA.