Industrial

Automation
Industrial Automation
An Overview on Industrial Automation – Need, Structure, Types &
Technologies

• To resolve the automation and control issues, industries use the ever-
changing technologies in control systems for efficient production or
manufacturing processes.
• These requires the high quality and reliable control systems.
• New trends in industrial automation deals with latest control devices and
communication protocols to control field devices like control valves and
other final control elements.
• Some of the smart devices or instruments used in automated industry has the
ability to control the processes and also communication capabilities without
interfacing to other field level control devices like PLC’s.
What is Industrial Automation?

• Industrial automation is the use of various control devices like PC’s/PLC’s,

used to have control on various operations of an industry without significant
intervention from humans and to provide automatic control performance.
• In industries, control strategies use a set of technologies which are
implemented to get the desired performance or output, making the
automation system most essential for industries.
Industrial automation involves
• Usage of advanced control strategies like cascade controls, modern
control hardware devices as PLC’s,sensors and other instruments for
sensing the control variables, signal conditioning equipments to
connect the signals to the control devices, drives and other
significant final control devices, standalone computing systems,
communication systems, alarming and HMI (Human Machine
Interface) systems.
Need of Automated Industry

To reduce Periodic or Manual checking

• In some critical applications periodic checking of the process
variable is necessary to perform industrial operations.
• Automation equipment reduces the periodic or manual operations
and establishes the automatic working conditions.
To increase the Productivity
• Automating the manufacturing and other production processes increases the production rate
by producing output at greater amounts for a given labour input.

Reduce the Production Cost

• Using the automatic machines and equipments, human intervention to control the processes
abruptly falls. This reduces the investment on the labor cost hence the production cost.

To improve Product Quality

• Continuously doing the same work may not be perfect in all the cases in terms of quality
specifications with human efforts. With automation equipment ,one can get reliable and
uniform product quality by using real time hardware control devices.

To increase the Flexibility

• Using the automation equipment various , process are handled simply without getting any
complex environment particularly in manufacturing processes.

Operator Friendly and Improves the Safety

• Complexity of operating the equipments or processes is reduced with industrial automation. It
changes the position of the operator as operator to the supervisory role.
Structure of Industrial Automation
• Structure of the industrial
automation explains various levels
of operation.
• These include sensor level,
automation control level (Unit, cell,
process controls),supervision level
and enterprise level.
• Pyramid structure indicates that, as
you go up the tip , the information is
aggregated and while coming down
it is dissolved.
• This means we will get the detailed
information for a particular variable
at the bottom.
• Industrial automation doesn’t mean
that all the levels are automated like
enterprise level need not be
automated.
• Sensor level is also called as process layer. It uses the
sensors and actuators to get the values of the process
variables in continuous or periodical manner.
• These act as eyes and arms of the industrial processes.
Some of these instruments include pneumatic
instruments, smart instruments, etc.
• Automation control level or control layer uses industrial
control devices like PC’s/PLC’s/DCS, etc. This level
utilizes the various embedded processors, PID
algorithms to control the process.
• Supervising level or SCADA layer gets lots of channel
information and stores the data in the system database.
• It acquires data from various control devices and
displays them on HMI’s (Human Machine Interface).
• It also gives alarm to indicate the levels of the process
and control variables.
• It uses special software to get the data and
communication protocols to interact with the field
devices.
• Enterprise level performs the tasks like scheduling,
orders and sales, product planning, etc.
Types of Industrial Automations

Automation systems are classified into four basic types ,based on the
flexibility and level of integration in manufacturing processes. Those
are described below.
Fixed Automation
• In this sequence of operations to be performed are fixed by the
equipment configuration.
• It is used in high volume production with dedicated equipment.
Examples of this automation system are automated assembly lines,
distilled process, machine transfer lines.
 Programmable Automation
• In this, sequence of operations can be changed by changing the program.
Sequence of operations is varied based on the different product
configurations.
• Also new programs can be entered into the programmable devices for the
new products.
• This type of system is used in batch processes, steel rolling mills, industrial
robots, etc.
• Flexible Automation
• It is the extension for the programmable automation.
• This offers a greater flexibility to deal with product design variations.
• Operators can give commands in the form of codes in the computer program
if wants to change the sequence of the process.
• Lower level equipments receive the instructions to operate at the field level
without losing the production time.
• This type of automation is used in manufacturing multipurpose CNC
machines, automatic guided vehicles, etc.
Integrated Automation
• In this type total system is fully automated under computer control.
Starting from designing process to the dispatching, whole system is
completely automated.
• Even the equipment is handled by the robots.
• This system is used in computer integrated manufacturing systems.
Automation Equipments

Sensors and Actuators

• A sensor senses the various process
variables and converts them into the
electrical or optical signals.
• These sensors include temperature,
pressure, velocity, flow, etc.
• Actuators convert the electrical signals
to the mechanical means to gain control
over processes.
• These include relays, magnets,
servomotors, etc.
• Some of the sensors and actuators have
the capability to communicate with the
industrial field communication buses
which comes under the smart devices.
Industrial computers

• Programmable Logic controllers (PLC’s) also called as industrial

computers are capable of being programmed to perform certain control
functions.
• It consists of a CPU or processor, I/O modules (both analog and digital) to
connect the various input/output devices and relay modules.
• These may be modular which is of fixed type or integrated types to extend
modules based on the inputs available.
• Along with the PLC’s, conventional PC’s are used to control the process by
online or by changing the programs.
• PLC’s comes with dedicated software to program the control strategy.
HMI(Human Machine Interface)

• HMI’s offers the facilities like, displaying the information on

computer screens and other displays, logging the results in the
database, giving alarm signal, etc.
• It uses technologies like SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition) and other visual based technologies.
Communication system

• In industries many sensors, actuators, controlling PC’s and other control

devices are geographically distributed and interacting with each other via
several data buses.
• There are three types of buses used in the industrial automation i.e., factory
bus, process bus, and the field bus.