What is Industrial Automation?

Using robotics and computer software, industrial automation enables machines and processes in several industries to be controlled by autonomous systems.

• With industrial automation, humans are replaced by computers and machines.

Advantages of an Automation System

Using automation can enhance productivity, reduce employee costs, increase precision, and increase flexibility, while reducing employee benefits costs.

Automation of factories and manufacturing plants improves the production rate. With greater production quality, it dramatically reduces the assembly time per product. Thus, for a given labor input, it produces a lot.

Hierarchy of Industrial Automation

The hierarchical arrangement of the automation system consists of different hierarchical levels.

• Field level - This level includes automation devices that acquire process parameters from various sensors, such as CNC machines and PLCs.

• Control level - This level is the most widely used robust industrial controller that can deliver automatic control functions based on sensors.

• Supervised and Production Control Level - At this level, automatic devices and monitoring systems facilitate controlling and intervening in functions such as setting production targets, monitoring various parameters, archiving historical data, and starting and stopping machines.

• Information level - This is the top level of industrial automation. This level includes production planning, customer and market analysis, orders and sales, etc.

Types of Industrial Automation Systems

1. Fixed or Hard Automation - The goal of this type of automation is to achieve high production rates through fixed and repetitive tasks.

2. Programmable Automation - Using this automation, a specific class of product changes and also assembling or processing operations can be changed with a modified control program.

3. Flexible or Soft Automation - With this automation system, you can make changes to the product design using automatic control equipment.

Sources

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/industrial-automation#:~:text=Industrial%20automation%20is%20the%20control,like%20robotics%20and%20computer%20software.

https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2015/09/what-is-industrial-automation.html