SCADA (Supervisory
Control and Data Acquisition) is concerned with gathering process information
from industrial control processes found in utilities such as power grids, water
networks, transportation, manufacturing, etc., to provide the human operators with the required real-time access to
industrial processes to be monitored and controlled either locally (on-site)or
remotely (i.e., through Internet). Conventional solutions such as
custom SCADA packages, custom communication protocols, and centralized
architectures are no longer appropriate for engineering this type of systems
because of their highly distribution and their uncertain continuously changing
working environments. Multi-agent systems (MAS) appeared as a new architectural
style for engineering complex and highly dynamic applications such as SCADA
systems. In this paper, we propose an approach for simply developing flexible
and interoperable SCADA systems based on the integration of MAS and OPC process
protocol. The proposed SCADA system has the following advantages: 1) simple (easier
to be implemented); 2) flexible (able to adapt to its environment dynamic
changes); and 3) interoperable (relative to the underlying control systems,
which belongs to diverse of vendors). The applicability of the proposed
approach is demonstrated by a real case study example carried out in a paper
mill.
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