With regard to the post “How can Cloud Solutions help the Industry?“, we should ask ourselves: Are industrial solutions ready for the Cloud? The answer to this question enables us to identify which solutions we can take to the Cloud to benefit from its services.
Focusing on the OMS/MOM (Operations Management Systems / Manufacturing Operations Management) environment, comprised of solutions like HMI, DCS, SCADA, MES, MIS (Manufacturing Information Systems), RTOM (Real-Time Operations Management), we can differentiate them according to its latency and criticality.
Latency refers to real-time events in front to transactional events, while criticality relates to the impact of these solutions on production systems from the point of view of security and finance. The following graph is derived from this differentiation. The graph shows the industrial solutions that can be included in the Cloud.
We should emphasize the relevance of some solutions due to its quick latency and higher criticality, like HMI, SCADA, Process History, Alarm Management, MES and Security solutions, which in general terms have to be locally implemented.
As a general rule, anything directly related or connected to a production process output must be locally implemented. Anything not critical for the production process, but complementary or supportive for the critical ones, may be implemented in the Cloud. The following table illustrates the typical requirements of the industry that can be provided by Cloud-ready solutions.
