Scada approaches to Remote Condition Monitoring

Traditionally, remote monitoring architectures have relied on data loggers collecting data at source for transmission to other systems using either bespoke protocols or ASCII formatted data transfer. As technology evolves, more plant equipment is becoming ´intelligent´ and can often report its own condition and health status. Furthermore, many items of plant are becoming network-enabled utilising either fixed or wireless media (in some cases both). These changes are forcing a rethink on strategy how we can best connect to the plant equipment to extract the essential condition information, and how we transport this across data networks into the necessary domains for action and analysis? Coupled with this is the ever increasing pressure from industry to utilise open and standardised protocols, data models and system approaches to reduce cost, allow for future expansion and provide flexibility to interchange system components. By their very nature, SCADA systems deliver more open connectivity options, including standard protocols, allowing end users to pick and choose the right component for their application, ultimately delivering a lower life cycle cost.