An IIoT and Web-based Low-Cost SCADA System for Industrial Automation

Nowadays, quick and uninterrupted access to information is crucial because of its influence on our personal and professional lives. Even in industry, any factory manager is keen to get real time information about the performance of the machines by using various industrial monitoring tools. In this regard, a perfect example of industrial monitoring tool is Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system which monitors and controls a network of Programmable Logical Controllers (PLCs). But SCADA system has its own sets of challenges as it is designed to operate only on closed networks. So, the real time information of the working machinery is available only inside the factory premises. To solve this challenge, Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) is used. Under IIoT umbrella, various features, advancements, and advantages of the IoT can be used to enhance the industrial systems. However, a SCADA system is traditionally expensive, and PLCs used are not able to connect to Internet. For this reason, PLCs can be traced or monitored remotely. In this paper, an IIoT-based low-cost SCADA system is proposed to connect any PLC supported machine to a remote cloud server. The overall proposed system is implemented and tested on a web-based framework. Proposed web-based framework results in optimum performance utilization of the connected machines.