Fabrico vs TrakSYS: Connected OEE Platform vs Complex MES for Manufacturers

Key Takeaways: SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and OEE software solve different problems but share data sources. SCADA controls and monitors industrial processes. OEE software measures production efficiency and connects losses to maintenance action. Fabrico is designed to work alongside your existing SCADA infrastructure, reading process data from SCADA or historians, not replacing the control layer you've already invested in.

See our roundup of production monitoring systems.

OEE software vs SCADA: two systems that are often confused but serve fundamentally different purposes.

What SCADA does: monitors and controls industrial processes in real time, sensor readings, valve positions, pump states, alarm management. SCADA is an operational control system.

What OEE software does: measures production performance (availability, performance, quality), identifies loss patterns, connects production losses to maintenance actions, and drives continuous improvement. OEE is a performance management system.

They use some of the same data sources (machine run/stop, production counts) but serve different functions and different users.

Fabrico reads from SCADA infrastructure, it doesn't replace it.

Three integration patterns for Fabrico + SCADA:

• OPC-UA from SCADA server: Most modern SCADA systems (Wonderware, FactoryTalk, WinCC) publish OPC-UA endpoints. Fabrico reads machine state, production counts, and quality signals from OPC-UA without touching the SCADA control layer.
• Data historian integration: Plants with OSIsoft PI or AVEVA PI already have years of production data. Fabrico reads historian tags for OEE calculation, no new sensor infrastructure required.
• Direct PLC alongside SCADA: Fabrico connects directly to PLCs via OPC-UA or Modbus, running parallel to the SCADA system without interference.

The Fabrico edge gateway sits in the DMZ between OT and IT networks, reading from SCADA/historian infrastructure without requiring any inbound connections to the OT network. The security architecture that OT engineers require.

SCADA systems capture what sensors are connected to. They miss what sensors can't detect.

Fabrico's Inefficiencies Zoom-In computer vision captures:

• Operator handling time and manual inefficiencies that PLCs and SCADA register as "machine running"
• Micro-stops under 30 seconds that SCADA sampling intervals miss
• Visual quality defects at inspection stations
• Video clips of downtime events for root cause analysis

In typical manufacturing deployments, Fabrico's computer vision captures 8-15% additional OEE losses that SCADA-only monitoring completely misses. That's the hidden factory, capacity that exists but isn't recovered because SCADA data alone doesn't make it visible.

The complete solution: SCADA for process control + Fabrico for OEE monitoring and maintenance execution + computer vision for capturing what sensors miss.