PLC and SCADA

This post is from Alicia Gilpin (Ali G), a friend and the originator of OT SCADA CON, Kids PLC Kits and a member of Automation Ladies. She is also CEO of Process & Controls Engineering, LLC in Seattle, Washington. She posted this on Linked In this morning and I just had to share.

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What is PLC and what is SCADA?

To answer that I first need to explain how manufacturing works.

We humans collect raw materials and turn them into products that we want. We used to do this manually, but we have become pretty clever recently and have started using automation to help us produce these things faster and on an insane scale (capacity.)

We developed hardware and software products to help us set these automatic lines up even faster. Today we call these industrial automation products.

Automation is about controlling machinery with electronics. Humans came up with the concept of a controller that we could program with custom machinery instructions. We commercialized products to support manufacturers and even created an industry just for installing these industrial control systems.

SCADA is a term for a system that most if not all manufacturers have. It is used to real time monitor and report productivity but also to record data from all the machinery and systems that are producing. SCADA is not just data management software but also the servers it lives on.

SCADA is IT heavy and PLC is not. There is a push to use the data to make better business decisions and we have been calling that Digital Transformation or the 4th industrial Revolution.

Some people start in IT and find their way into SCADA. Some people start in PLC and find their way into SCADA.

We no longer can keep up with cyber-attacks on our SCADA and PLC systems so IT and OT are joining forces where previously they collided often.

We are calling that IT/OT convergence I think.

Thoughts in my Sunday analysis? -Alicia Gilpin (Ali G)