Flexible Manufacturing Cell SCADA System for Educational Purposes SARAH REYNARD, 1 ORIOL GOMIS-BELLMUNT, 1 ANTONI SUDRIA ` -ANDREU, 1 ORIOL BOIX-ARAGONE ` S, 1 ISRAEL BENI ´ TEZ-PINA 2 1 CITCEA-DEE-UPC Center of Technological Innovation in Static Converters and Drives, Electrical Engineering Department, Technical University of Catalonia, Av. Diagonal 647 08028, Barcelona, Spain 2 Departamento de Control Automa´tico, Facultad de Ingenierı´a Ele´ctrica, Universidad de Oriente (FIE-UO), Ave. Las Ame´ricas s/n 90400 Santiago de Cuba, Cuba Received 16 January 2006; accepted 2 January 2007 ABSTRACT: This article deals with the development of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition SCADA system to be used in a flexible manufacturing cell for educational purposes in different automation engineering fields (SCADA development, PLC programming and industrial communications). When dealing with industrial communications or PLC program- ming the SCADA is employed as a supervision tool. In the other hand, when teaching SCADA systems the application will be developed by the students and the SCADA presented in this article is employed as a model. The application communicates through Internet with four controllers, by means of an OPC server, visualizes comprehensive information about the elements of the cell, includes the video streaming of an IP camera, and features traceability and report generation capabilities. ß 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 16: 2130, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.20115 Keywords: engineering education; SCADA; PLC programming; manufacturing automation; flexible manufacturing cell; remote laboratory INTRODUCTION The proliferation of highly automated systems in the industry has come up with the need for engineers capable of handling increasingly complex automation challenges. Many educational institutions worldwide have rapidly shown their concern and have included automation courses in their curriculums. Among the different automation disciplines, the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) programming and the Super- visory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) development are very relevant issues, since they are used in many of the automation solutions imple- mented in most of the industries worldwide. A number of remote laboratories are available in the literature [15], covering a wide range of applications. Other authors have dealt with the introduction of Correspondence to O. Gomis-Bellmunt (oriol.gomis@upc.edu). ß 2008 Wiley Periodicals Inc. 21