A human-machine interface device suitable for use in an automation system comprising a plurality of the human-machine interface devices, where each human-machine interface device includes at least one hardware resource, a system bus, and an interconnect circuit and is configured for interconnecting with at least one other human-machine interface device to form a device cluster, where the interconnect circuit provides a communication channel between individual system bus in each human-machine interface device forming the device cluster.

The invention relates to an operator panel (1) having one or more applications (121, 122) for operating at least one production system (2). A configuration data memory (13) is set up to store configuration data that are provided for configuring the one or more applications (121, 122) of the operator panel (1). A synchronization module (14) is set up to access configuration data stored in the configuration data memory (13) and to synchronize these data via a communications interface (11) of the operator panel (1) with configuration data that are stored in a configuration data memory (13, 13) of a remotely disposed operator panel (1, 1). A configuration access module (15) is set up to receive from at least one application (121, 122) of the operator panel (1) a read request for stored configuration data, to access stored configuration data, and to read the stored configuration data corresponding to the read request and to deliver the read configuration data for configuring the at least one application (121, 122) to the at least one application (121, 122).

A SCADA web HMI system includes a plurality of PLCs, a plurality of HMI client devices, and a SCADA serve device. The SCADA server device includes a communication driver and a client management unit connected to the plurality of HMI client devices. The client management unit transmits in-use screen information indicating a screen currently used by the HMI client devices to the communication driver. The communication driver acquires a screen-specific device list in which parts, and numbers and memory addresses of the PLCs storing the signal data corresponding to the parts are defined, for each of screens displayed on the HMI client devices, selects the signal data defined in the screen-specific device list corresponding to the currently-used screen indicated by the in-use screen information, adds a screen identifier to the selected signal data, and transmits the resultant signal data to the client management unit for each data type.