8 Reasons to Upgrade Your
AVEVA SCADA System
The journey to operational excellence is multifaceted and spans many aspects of an organization. It requires ongoing attention, dedication, and focus on continuous improvement. Keeping your systems well-tuned and current is one of the many ways to protect your investment so you can be nimble and efficient in responding to challenges and opportunities. Upgrading starts with the software, and benefits extend to keeping the company protected and efficient.
1. Get Current: Security, Features & Functionality
Every AVEVA release contains new features and functionality for your control system. These may include simple stability and/or performance enhancements to the product; or larger feature updates that introduce completely new functionality to the application.
How do you benefit from new releases?
- Mitigate Security Vulnerabilities: Upgrading comes with the latest cybersecurity updates for your system.
- Modernize Graphics: Provide a better user experience and refreshed visualization of data with updated graphics.
- Visualize PLC Code: Gain the ability to look at PLC code directly from the HMI, or – in the case of Operations Management Interface (OMI) – receive a completely new HMI option.
- Improve Performance: Enhance functionality that allows the system to run smoother and quicker than previous versions.
2. Security, Security, Security
It is worth repeating. Cybersecurity considerations are now a routine part of any SCADA implementation. AVEVA System Management Server, a feature on newer installations of AVEVA software, provides support for secured communication between all nodes in your SCADA implementation. New security enhancements are also released with every version of Microsoft Windows Update.
3. Increase Mobility
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that flexibility is very important when working with your SCADA system. You need easy access to your application, at any time of the day, from any location, on any device. Plus, it must be highly secure. This can be quite the list of requirements, yet all are essential to deliver the mobile access necessary for your organization. AVEVA serves this need with several mobile access solutions that can deliver your application to any device, securely, via any HTML5-compatible browser or mobile app. These solutions are easy to configure and utilize industry best practices in their implementation.
4. Predict Issues with Operational Intelligence
SCADA customers have been collecting data for many years and use it for trend visualization and regulatory reporting. This is a good start, but your data is much more valuable than that. AVEVA operational intelligence offers solutions that store your data, and help you predict potential problems within your process and equipment before it costs you downtime and repairs by using:
- Machine learning anomaly feeds
- Process performance calculations
- Condition-based monitoring and alerts
- Guided and advanced analytics models
5. Scale Your Application with your Business
AVEVA systems are sized to your needs with single node implementations up to unlimited site bundles (including unlimited I/O, tags, and clients), plus many variations in between. AVEVA System Platform, formerly Wonderware, has been tested and verified to run in the millions of I/O, so you will never be required to have a fractional application or several applications to accommodate everything.
6. Apply Situational Awareness to Make Informed Decisions with a High-Performance HMI
Abnormal situations in a plant often can be attributed to human error. This is in part because traditional HMIs create confusion by presenting too much information in a single screen without appropriate context. Putting operators on the spot to decide which information matters most may compromise critical operations. Situational awareness solves this challenge by presenting the user with highly contextualized and easily interpreted information that is specific to the most important process issues while filtering out the “noise” that can distract operators.
7. Become Cloud Ready
AVEVA software in the cloud drives business resilience and ensures a sustainable growth. It enables you to:
- Pivot and transform faster when needed
- Reduce costs
- Easily scale in response to dynamic economic conditions
- Remove organizational silos
- Enable real-time collaboration
- Increase deployment speed
- Lower your total cost of ownership
8. Establish a Connected Workforce and Paperless Plant Floor
Expand your system and reduce the time it takes to get frontline workers up to speed on the basic skills needed to run today’s complex industrial operations. Tools like AVEVA Teamwork help create a digital knowledge repository that standardizes and stores best practices with detailed process knowledge before experienced workforces retire. Additionally, a solution like AVEVA Discrete Lean Management can replace time-consuming paperwork used for work management and data collection in discrete manufacturing facilities.
