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What does SCADA mean?
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is a combination of hardware and software used for industrial automation.
SCADA allows users to:
- control and monitor industrial processes both locally and remotely
- acquire, process and record data
- interact with local machines
With the help of SCADA systems, companies can make smarter decisions, improve efficiency and minimize downtime. SCADA is used in many industries and is widely used in manufacturing, automation, oil and gas, and wastewater.
Local sensors, devices and PLCs – which collect data sets called tags – are connected to an on-site server or remote/virtual machine. Storage in a historical database for later analysis is possible. To control processes via operator workstations, HMIs or directly on the SCADA server, users interact locally with the SCADA system.