Fact-IoT is our proprietary IIoT platform, developed to address the specificities of our systems and the inadequacy of pure cloud solutions.
Specialities:
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- It must be able to save all online data according to operator instructions or set event.
- Requires unified database management solution, using cloud database
- A special solution for storing time-series data is needed to increase the speed by 100 times, or up to 1000 times for even larger data volumes
- A scripting programming language is needed to perform the simplified calculations
- Data modelling and analytical capability (see energy management) to evaluate historical data
- Reports should be produced as interactive, responsive web pages based on data models
- Alarms, event monitoring, logging, evaluation in graphical, audio, image, email or SMS, event map, event statistics, etc.
- Communication with all common industrial controllers (PLC, DDC, HMI), around 140 communication drivers besides connection to other cloud services
The optimal IIoT architecture
- No direct connection between SCADA and PLC
- opening up the possibility for industrial automation systems (PLC / HMI; SCADA; EMS and CMMS; MES; ERP; Cloud) to communicate with each other, thus enabling real automatic operation without the need for human intervention
- internal operations are not dependent on a cloud service provider
- with this architecture, SCADA (EMS, BMS, CMMS, etc.) is connected to the data of local IIoT and IoT via the “Main frame”
- systems are connected to the local IIoT platform based on IP
- the server is freed from many of its previous functions and can its resources can be made available to run the local IIoT
- by interposing the Distribution Service, a hierarchical system with distributed intelligence can be created, capable of optimal compression and data transfer, resulting in significant data traffic reduction
- Connect any IoT or IIoT cloud service (AWS, Microsoft Azure, PTC ThingWorx, etc.)
The SCADA background tasks (communication, alarms, reporting, DMS-BI, cyclic program, trend and data management, historical data, etc.) are all transferred to the Fact-IoT server, which is also operating as a VISION server (in this case).
Benefits:
- Security: since operator actions do not affect the IIoT, the VISION user does not reach IIoT services, human error is eliminated from the system
- Speed: a significant improvement in speed by compressing the data by 1/2000 (0.05%) allowing the establishement of extremely fast communication (we managed to measure a speed increase of two times, in some cases ten times, compared to the previous system)
- Redundant systems: reduced switching time between redundant systems to 10-100 ms
- Trends: real-time trends can be displayed on clients
- Modification sensitivity can be extended to the client: IIoT can treat system components as if all components were working in a shared memory
- Restart: due to the change table modification, it is not necessary to restart VISION, neither the server nor the client, just copy the files
- Data integrity: the SCADA application sees all the data that has been uploaded to the system – both on server and client – without even needing a variable table declaration, thus ensuring the easiest possible interoperability between systems and projects