The subject projects of this year’s Scada Review are a worthy reflection of the effort put in by the respondent end-users, SIs and vendors. It is encouraging to see that even in these times of economic stagnation and uncertainty there are world-class projects being engineered by South African companies across a range of industrial sectors.
Insight in the detail
We remind readers that the value of the reviews is not always about the capabilities of the scada product – it may be about how the project has been engineered or managed, an innovative system architecture or the adoption of certain standards. This year’s reviews contain details of all of these and more.
Our subject projects
Highlights of Adroit’s submission include an upgrade to an existing Adroit 8 system at a cold storage facility in the Western Cape with a complete revamp of the mimics and animation.
In 2016, the logging of the tags was changed to SQL database for more flexible reporting and report generation for management. All the control functions, which were controlled by 50 HMIs, were added to Adroit, with the support of 55 PLCs.
Wonderware’s subject project involved the design of a central control room at a mining operation in the Northern Cape. High availability of the services provided was an essential component of the overall design, while existing legacy infrastructure and systems had to be considered in the migration process from a highly fragmented environment to a single consolidated platform.
Driven by a 10-metre video wall in a centrally controlled environment, this innovative project provides both mine management and the operational team with an integrated and situationally aware dashboard. This enables enhanced decision making, and the ability to recognise opportunities and address challenges proactively. It is supported by core services such as power, network and data centre infrastructure to ensure business availability, continuity and effective data recoverability.
Thank you
On behalf of our readers, we thank the end-users, SIs and vendors for their efforts in comprehensively completing our 2018 scada questionnaire, for sharing their expertise and experience, and continuing to expand the knowledge base of the C&I industry in South Africa.
Notes:
1. The order of appearance of reviews is the order in which they were received by SA Instrumentation and Control.
2. Some reviewer responses have been edited due to space and comprehension considerations.
3. A ‘no’ or ‘N/A’ response to a question in the project-specific responses does not necessarily mean that the scada system lacks that feature; only that the feature was not implemented in, or not applicable to, the subject project.
4. Where a respondent has not answered a question or has answered off topic that response has been omitted.
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