Connecting industrial systems without breaking them
Most industrial facilities have accumulated control systems over decades. A processing plant might have PLCs from three different vendors, a SCADA system from a fourth, a separate historian, and a business system that needs production data that currently lives in none of them. Getting data to flow reliably between these systems - and keeping it flowing when any one of them changes - is OT systems integration.
Done well, it gives operations and management access to accurate production data, reduces manual data entry and transcription errors, and makes it possible to analyse what’s actually happening across a plant rather than guessing from operator logs. Done poorly, it creates fragile connections that break quietly, introduces security exposures into systems that previously had none, and leaves engineers maintaining integrations that nobody fully understands.
What we integrate
PLC to SCADA - connecting control system data to operator and supervisor interfaces. This is the most common integration requirement and the foundation of most OT systems work. We configure drivers, test data quality, and verify that what the SCADA displays matches what the PLC is actually doing.
SCADA to historian - structured archiving of process data for trending, reporting and analysis. Historian configuration, tag selection, compression settings and data quality handling. Getting the historian right means the data is there when you need it for post-incident analysis or production reporting.
OT to IT data transfer - moving production data from historian or SCADA into business systems, reporting platforms, or cloud services. Designed with appropriate network segmentation and unidirectional data flows to keep the OT network protected.
Multi-system consolidation - creating a unified data view across multiple PLCs, SCADA systems or plant areas that currently operate independently. Common on larger mining and processing sites where systems have been added incrementally over years.
Third-party equipment integration - connecting new or existing equipment from vendors who use proprietary communications protocols into your existing control environment. We use protocol converters and gateways where native integration isn’t possible.
MES and ERP integration - production counts, batch records, quality data and equipment status from the plant floor into manufacturing execution or enterprise resource planning systems. Designed so that the integration is robust to normal plant variability - equipment offline, communication gaps, mode changes - without generating spurious data in the business system.
Protocol and platform experience
OPC-UA is the preferred standard for modern OT data exchange - well-structured, secure by design, and widely supported by current PLC, SCADA and historian platforms. We also work with OPC-DA for legacy system compatibility, Modbus TCP and RTU, EtherNet/IP, DNP3 for utility and remote applications, and MQTT for cloud-connected applications.
Where equipment uses proprietary protocols, we identify appropriate gateways - Red Lion, Kepware, and similar products - to bridge into standard OT protocols.
Security and reliability
Integration points are potential failure points and potential security exposures. We design integrations to fail safely - a lost connection to a business system should not affect the control system that’s running the process. We also design with security in mind from the start, applying network segmentation, access control, and appropriate data flow direction so that plant floor systems are not exposed to risks introduced by the integration.