Efficient and Human Centered Industry 5.0 Data Propagation on the Operational Technology Level. Case Study with OPC UA Interfacing, Node-RED and Ignition

Industry 5.0 is focused on human centricity, sustainability and resilience, but in the meantime it is relying on Industry 4.0 main objective that refers to efficiency increase. The operational technology (OT) level usually lacks data structuring and context, these steps being attributed to the middleware interfacing with the information technology (IT), or higher SCADA levels. Higher the hierarchical level, lower the technological process related knowledge becomes, and therefore representations may not be optimal. Also, various supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) solutions development targeting the same controlled process lead to different perspectives, higher costs, larger development times, and a more difficult maintenance. Considering both legacy systems and technological progress, the current paper proposes a solution that assures efficient and human centered structured, contextualized, and graphically sustained data propagation on the OT level. The work approaches and builds upon industry adopted environments and protocols in order to assure a fast adoption and a large impact of the solution. A Node-RED and Ignition based case study is presented, representing the PLC to SCADA data integration levels. The structured and graphically depicted data transfer and representation using Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA) protocol is showing good results, without the need of additional developments on the SCADA levels.