What are the 5 most important criteria for choosing an HMI?

HMI and SCADA systems have been around for almost 40 years, and are widely used today in the vast majority of plants around the world. You may be satisfied with the basic performance of your current HMI, but given the multitude of software options available today, it's worth asking whether you could achieve greater long-term cost-effectiveness by going beyond the basic HMI. What do you think?

Omer Qadri, Product Manager at AVEVA with over 15 years' experience in evangelizing industrial automation software and SaaS applications, reveals five key points to consider when evaluating an HMI/SCADA system. 

1. Advanced graphics and visualization capabilities

The behavior of a user interface is just as important as the way users themselves interact with it. How do they maximize or resize windows across multiple monitors, how do they zoom or pan, how do they use multiple touch functions...? If it's difficult for users to interact with your HMI, they won't take full advantage of all its features. 

So you need to make sure that your HMI has all the best graphic features, such as a library of ready-to-use, fully reconfigurable, “situation of perception”-oriented, vector-based industrial graphic objects. But also the ability to create multi-functional objects for strong reuse across multiple projects, the ability to apply presentation styles to objects to easily deploy graphic presentation standards, the ability to easily materialize equipment on a map, and access to Windows app support, etc...

These extended graphic capabilities ultimately enable operators to obtain information at a glance, easily identify anomalies and respond to critical events in real time.

2. Unlimited development

Having natively unlimited PLC input/output (I/O) licenses will help your company adapt to future production growth. So you need to make sure that your future HMI/SCADA software is designed to handle them. It's also best to choose an HMI/SCADA system that has been thoroughly tested to handle a large number of PLC I/Os, to avoid slow response times and other problems caused by systems that aren't designed for unlimited PLC I/O use.
Cost of ownership is not limited to the cost of designing and implementing a project. The real cost depends on how long the project can deliver a return on investment while keeping your plant competitive. A good HMI investment takes into account the “operational life of a project”, i.e. how long you can maintain, upgrade and add new functionality to the system. To achieve this, you need to have access to the software's evolutions natively and free of charge for the duration of its lifecycle. 

3. Focus on robust HMI/SCADA security

A key question to ask any HMI/SCADA software supplier is: How much do they invest each year in security patches and ongoing system maintenance?
Their answer is likely to depend on the size of their installation base. Proven HMI leaders with a larger installation base are likely to be more secure than smaller suppliers who rely on open-source technologies, use third-party components or employ Java, which has been proven to have a higher degree of security vulnerability. Robust HMI security ensures that sensitive industrial data and operations remain safe from unauthorized access or malicious cyber threats.

4. Opt for easy-to-configure software

Every HMI/SCADA system needs to be validated in terms of its ease of use and day-to-day operation. This means determining whether people with different technical skills can quickly and easily use the software to make configuration changes. 
A large number of HMI/SCADA software packages often require you to enter the same information repeatedly and in several places. Not only is such a system slow and difficult to configure, it's also prone to numerous errors.

5. Integration and interoperability

When choosing HMI/SCADA software, it's also important to ensure that the solution has a high level of integration and interoperability. At a minimum, the HMI/SCADA solution must support :

• OPC UA data exchange (client and server)
• Data exchange with web servers
• Extensive connectivity with market PLCs and equipment
• Total, seamless integration with an archiving solution
• Ability to archive data (measurements, alarms and events) in the cloud
• The ability to run remote applications in a fully responsive web format for use on a multitude of devices (PC, laptop, tablet, phone). 

Finally, don't forget that your HMI is much more than just a software license. Your HMI/SCADA is an integral part of your company, not just its operations. 

And what about AVEVA?

With AVEVA InTouch HMI 2023, you can imagine new ways of supervising your installations, notably with the ability to use your InTouch applications remotely with InTouch Web, but also to operate them from a cell phone with the AVEVA Mobile Operations mobile application. Added to this is the ability to archive all supervision data (measurements, alarms and events) in a local Historian or in a Cloud Historian with AVEVA Insight.