PLC FAT and SAT checklist: test behavior and handover evidence
Plan factory and site acceptance around requirements, observable results, failure states, approved changes and recoverable project files.
SCADA
Supervisory control, historians, alarming, and operations visualization.
Learning paths & worksheets: Industrial automation fundamentals · PLC FAT & SAT checklist template · OT backup & restore test template · OT reliability and security: inventory, segment and recover
OT backup and restore testing: prove the recovery path
Inventory the files and dependencies needed to recover a control system, set recovery objectives, and test restoration on an isolated target.
Historian sampling and deadband: budget storage without losing events
Estimate raw historian volume, distinguish acquisition from storage filtering, and validate compression against the signals and events that matter.
SCADA architecture: a design guide from field to control room
Design SCADA systems that scale — field layer, communications, servers, redundancy, and alarming — without painting the project into a corner.
OT incident response: a ransomware playbook for plants that can't just stop
Build an OT incident response plan that respects process safety — roles, containment without shutdowns, backups that restore, and tested playbooks.
IEC 61850: substation automation beyond hardwired interlocks
GOOSE messaging, sampled values, and SCL engineering — what IEC 61850 changes in substations and how to plan a migration from legacy RTUs.
High-performance HMI: the ISA-101 approach operators trust
Design HMIs operators can read at a glance — grayscale abnormality display, information hierarchy, and navigation that follows ISA-101.
HMI alarm design principles that operators can use
Alarm rationalization, priorities, deadbands, shelving, and high-performance graphics for HMIs that support decisions instead of creating noise.
Industrial historian tag naming: a guide that survives the next integration
Asset hierarchy, units, quality, timestamps, metadata, and versioning patterns for process data that engineers can still understand years later.
SCADA, MES, and historian: where each one ends
Three systems that all "collect plant data" but answer different questions. Boundaries, handoffs, and how to stop buying two of them for one job.
OT zones and conduits: segmentation that follows IEC 62443
How to divide a plant network into zones, control what crosses between them, and why flat OT networks keep making incident reports.
DCS, explained through ABB 800xA and Freelance
What distributed control is, how the two ABB flagships differ, and when a DCS beats a PLC/SCADA stack.
ISA standards: ISA-95, ISA-88, ISA/IEC 62443
ISA's standards library, including ISA-95/IEC 62264 (enterprise–control integration), ISA-88 (batch), and ISA/IEC 62443 (OT security).
NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3: Guide to OT Security
NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3: the current federal guide to OT security — architecture, risk assessment, controls, and incident response for ICS.
Automation.com — news and resources
Automation.com: industrial automation news, tutorials, and vendor coverage from the ISA-affiliated publication.
The Automation Blog — PLC & HMI tutorials
Shawn Tierney's long-running PLC and HMI tutorial site: reviews, training, and plain-spoken controls commentary.
Terms in this topic
- Alarm management
- Lifecycle discipline for useful, actionable process alarms.
- DNP3
- Utility SCADA protocol for telemetry, events, and control.
- Event frame
- Time-bounded historian record that gives an event operational context.
- Factory acceptance test (FAT)
- An agreed pre-delivery test of equipment or application behavior against specified requirements.
- Historian
- Long-term high-resolution store for process time-series data.
- Historian deadband
- A configured change threshold used in some historian or gateway recording policies.
- HMI
- Operator interface for monitoring and controlling equipment.
- ISA-101
- Lifecycle and design guidance for industrial HMIs.
- ISA-18.2
- Standard lifecycle for rational, actionable process alarms.
- RTU
- Rugged controller for distributed infrastructure assets.
- SCADA
- Live supervision, alarming, and operator control.
- Sequence of events (SOE)
- High-resolution timestamped record of discrete state changes.
- Site acceptance test (SAT)
- An agreed test of installed equipment and interfaces under the site’s approved conditions.
Related topics
Factory Software · PLCs · OT Cybersecurity · Industrial Networking · Industrial IoT / IIoT · Industrial Hardware