8CIOReview | | MAY 2021IN MY OPINIONIntro - The promises of SCADASCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems have always promised improvements in efficiency, productivity, and reliability. If you just collect lots of data from the production floor and throw it into a database you can use this information to eliminate downtime, optimize production rates, prevent quality defects, etc. Right? Well, in theory yes. In reality most SCADA systems have been collecting data for years while failing to deliver on these promises. A common phrase among SCADA users is "There is no R in SCADA", referring to the lack of reporting capability. Sure, you can ask your IT department to write a bunch of queries, or you can buy reporting packages to put the data into charts and tables, but this falls well short of providing the actionable business intelligence you need to improve productivity. What you need are things like OEE software (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) that can provide interactive tools to analyze downtime, quality, and production rates with drill downs to uncover root causes. From there you can add artificial intelligence (AI) software for predictive maintenance, predictive quality, digital twins, etc.The problem is that most companies struggle just to maintain their SCADA systems. Every security patch to the Windows operating system or virus software can have a ripple effect that requires you to upgrade your SCADA system. When there is any software error in the SCADA system, your engineer needs to call into the SCADA hotline where they typically are told "Try installing our latest upgrade. Maybe that will fix it." These frequent upgrades are time consuming for the engineer and may actually increase the downtime you were hoping to prevent in the first place.Telling your engineers that they now need to also support OEE and AI software, makes the local support requirements orders of magnitude worse. So what's the solution?The Benefits of Software as a ServiceSoftware as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud hosted architecture where the cloud vender manages not only the physical servers but also the software including the OS, THE RISKS AND REWARDS OF CLOUD CONNECTED SCADABy Tom Craven, VP of Product Strategy, RRAMAC Connected SystemsTom Craven
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