"WinCC OA"
is the abbreviation for "SIMATIC WinCC Open Architecture", a software package designed for the use in automation
technology. The main application area is the operation and control of technical
plants using VDU workstations with full
graphical capability.
This
application requires In addition to the presentation
of current process states, this application also requires
the possibility to transfer conditions
and commands to the process and its control equipment.
The user uses the mouse,
the keyboard and other
input devices interactively
with an immediately displayed response on the screen. Alerting
in case of critical conditions or exceeding of a threshold as
well as historical archiving
of data for later presentation and interpretation also
belongs to the core functions.
Such
systems are mostly called control
systems, visualization
systems or according to the Anglo-american acronym as SCADA or HMI. SCADA is the abbreviation
for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition which describes the manner of the programm
package very well. HMI stands for Human Machine Interface.
Figure: The role of WinCC OA within an automation
system
Therefore,
WinCC OA is
a supervisory software for the control centre
or machine operation. PC-based servers and
work stations are used as the hardware platform. Together with
control systems of the basic automation (PLCPLC[1],
DDC[2],
RTU[3],...)
plus their sensors and I/O modules, it forms a complete automation
system.
|