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Cover Story
Cover Story
PLCs Power Industrial Data Integration
PLCs have recently gained capabilities formerly possible only with PCs, expanding their role to support seamless data integration with the enterprise.
By Damon Purvis, AutomationDirect
Not too many years ago, the roles of indus- trial automation devices and systems were a little more straightforward. Most field de-
vices and sensors were relatively ‘dumb’ and were connected directly to controllers, which may have interacted with operator displays, and in rare cas- es some data may have flowed up to higher lev- el enterprise systems. Today’s smart sensors, clev- er controllers, and more capable communications have improved upon this scenario, and end users are looking for the best ways to enable the enter- prise host systems to access valuable field-level data.
The operations technology (OT) domain of sen- sors, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and hu- man-machine interfaces (HMIs) is converging with the information technology (IT) world of PC servers and cloud connectivity. In practical terms, all these tech- nologies are more intelligent than ever, with a lot of overlapping functionality, so users have more options than ever for building or upgrading an industrial auto- mation system to deliver integrated data. Applications where OT data is accessed with IT methods are often referred to as internet of things (IoT) implementations.
In particular, some of today’s newest PLCs are speeding end users on their journey to seam- lessly extract data from their manufacturing sys- tems and transport it to enterprise systems so busi- ness users can make information-based decisions on how to optimize operations. This article dis- cusses why trusted OT-centric PLC platforms are making this possible due to IT-friendly additions.
YESTERDAY’S CHALLENGES
Gathering field data, let alone connecting to some higher-level host system, historically has in- volved several types of challenges. Hardwired sensors were easiest to connect to a PLC, but reliably pub- lishing the PLC information up to on-site or cloud- based systems required careful curation of the data structures, along with configuration of networking and communication protocols. PLCs didn’t support all the industrial protocols required to talk with more intelligent field devices, and they certainly had lim- itations for connecting with any host systems. Navi- gating the architectural hierarchy from the control level, through operations, up to the enterprise sys- tems and the cloud was a thorny problem (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Sending valuable plant floor data up to higher level operations, enterprise, and remote cloud systems has traditionally entailed troublesome configuration for many layers of hardware, software, and networking.
Cover Story www.automationnotebook.com | Issue 46
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