•The article proposes an architecture and data models for integration of simulations and industrial SCADA systems.•The proposed solution combines a technical integration level and a semantic level for configuration of the technical level.•The knowledge for integration can be re-used for simulation design support and generating structures of simulation models.•The proposed approach reflects a simulation task definition and requirements on the management of simulations and data. Stricter requirements on the quality of industrial plant operation together with environmental limits and decreasing energy consumption bring more complex automation systems. The intelligent control techniques, which are based on approaches from diverse disciplines including statistics, artificial intelligence or signal processing, have been widely used during the last years and their benefits have been proved. They cannot be developed and tested without simulation models and access to online and historical data. This article proposes a platform for the integration of simulations and industrial SCADA systems supporting complex data access and simulation code re-use. The idea of the presented framework is to connect simulations, data sources, optimizers, other calculations and SCADA systems into one integrated environment seamlessly. A technical level of the framework provides integration of stakeholders and a semantic level captures engineering knowledge in inter-mapped ontologies and configures the technical level, which is often called model-driven configuration. The semantic level utilizes a formal model implemented as set of ontologies. The major contribution of the article are the layered model of the integration architecture and formulation of the integration requirements in the industrial automation domain. The proposed solution has been implemented and tested on a software prototype level. It is demonstrated on two use-cases covering both design and integration of simulation models from the industrial perspective. The proposed architecture is intended to be as general as possible, however it has been tested on signal-oriented simulators only. It is the main limitation of this contribution and it should be addressed in upcoming work.