  SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is concerned with gathering
process information from industrial control processes found in utilities such
as power grids, water networks, transportation, manufacturing, etc., to provide
the human operators with the required real-time access to industrial processes
to be monitored and controlled either locally (on-site)or remotely (i.e.,
through Internet). Conventional solutions such as custom SCADA packages, custom
communication protocols, and centralized architectures are no longer
appropriate for engineering this type of systems because of their highly
distribution and their uncertain continuously changing working environments.
Multi-agent systems (MAS) appeared as a new architectural style for engineering
complex and highly dynamic applications such as SCADA systems. In this paper,
we propose an approach for simply developing flexible and interoperable SCADA
systems based on the integration of MAS and OPC process protocol. The proposed
SCADA system has the following advantages: 1) simple (easier to be
implemented); 2) flexible (able to adapt to its environment dynamic changes);
and 3) interoperable (relative to the underlying control systems, which belongs
to diverse of vendors). The applicability of the proposed approach is
demonstrated by a real case study example carried out in a paper mill.
