Towards an architecture for service-oriented process monitoring and control

The initiative AESOP (ArchitecturE for Service-Oriented Process-Monitoring and - Control) envisions a Service-oriented Architecture approach for monitoring and control of Process Control applications (batch and continuous process). Large process industry systems are a complex (potentially very large) set of (frequently) multi-disciplinary, connected, heterogeneous systems that function as a complex system of which the components are themselves systems. The future “Perfect Plant” will be able to seamlessly collaborate and enable monitoring and control information flow in a cross-layer way. As such the different systems will be part of an SCADA/DCS ecosystem, where components can be dynamically added or removed and dynamic discovery enables the on-demand information combination and collaboration. All current and future systems will be able to share information in a timely and open manner, enabling an enterprise-wide system of systems that will dynamically evolve based on business needs. The SOA-based approach proposed by AESOP can, on one hand, simplify the integration of monitoring and control systems on application layer. On the other hand, the networking technologies that are already known to control engineers could also simplify the inclusion of or migration from existing solutions and integration of the next generation SCADA and DCS systems at network layer.