Open source SCADA system for advanced monitoring of industrial processes

Modern industries demand reliable supervision and control of every process involved in the manufacturing. Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems provide a reference frame for integrating the majority of entities of an automation process by using computers to control production systems. Integrating a fully operational CIM system implies high costs of licenses of specialized automation software, which limits its penetration to low and medium size industries. This paper presents the development of an open source supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system by using the general purpose programming platform, Python. The SCADA system offers communication capabilities through an open source OPC-UA server, which solves data exchange with control devices such as PLC, PAC, etc. The system also provides fault-tolerance features thanks to the implementation of an active fault tolerant control (AFTC) architecture. The proposed approach performs a three-layer interaction of the CIM model, and offers similar capabilities of commercial SCADA systems. The proposed approach is tested in a laboratory setup. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed system in practical applications.