A supervisory control system and display client are disclosed. The supervisory control system generates a graphical display representative of an operational status of operational components in a plant, facility or process being supervised. There are typically several types of operational components in the plant, facility or process. The system includes a server in communication with the operational components via a network. The server maintains a plurality of equipment unit objects, each of the equipment unit objects having one or more parameters representative of the operational status of the operational components. A display client is in communication with the server. The display client stores one or more equipment symbol objects, each of the one or more equipment symbol objects defining a graphical representation of one of the one or more operational components in the graphical display. The display client also stores a picture object that describes a location of each of the one or more operational components in the graphics display. The display client requests an update of the graphical display and receives equipment unit objects from the server. A processor in the display client generates the graphical display by processing the one or more equipment unit objects with the picture object and with the one or more equipment symbol objects.