What is Industrial automation & how it evolved

What is industrial Automation

Industrial Automation is a technique by which we make hand over human control to machines. In industrial automation machines are programmed to accomplish the tasks which human beings used to achieve. Why it is done? Because of its advantages:

• Through Industrial automation we are able to do mass production with less manpower

• Quality of the product is increased
• Safety of man & equipment is increased
• More accurate process control
• Since human intervention is less so reliability of the system is higher
• Systems operate is low power supply, more electronic control so equipment life is higher
• Changes in process logic becomes easier since logics are changed mostly through software

L & T                                        Schneider  Siemens                                 Allen Bradley Messung                                  Modicon Mitsubishi                                 Asia Automation

Principal Industrial Automation MNCs

	ALSTOM                                 FESTO Fuji Electric                            Toshiba TATA Honeywell                       Omron Fanuc Delta

 

How industrial automation control system Evolved?

Initially automation was achieved through manual control, operators used to control the process at every step. Human intervention was there at every step. Drawbacks were low quality output, errors involved in human involvement affected compromised safety, wastage of raw material, and accuracy of human action.

Then came Pneumatic Control: Industrial automation in this era was achieved through invention of pneumatic controllers in early 1920s. Automation was achieved by controlling air to pneumatic valves, which in turn were actually switched on/off by relays and switches. They were very bulky and changing of the logic was very complex procedure since a lot of rework was required to accomplish change in logic. So time taken to complete task changes was very high  

Hard wired logic control: contactors, relays (for switching), timers and counters (for timing and counting) were used for achieving desired industrial automation. But these systems also resulted into bulky panels. A lot of wiring was involved so time taken to complete task was higher. Defect investigation & troubleshooting was complex.

Electronic Control using Logic Gates: In early 60s electronics dominated the process, electronic logic gates were used for achieving logical operations. they replaced switching devices like relays and contactors in the control circuits. Electronic times & counters replaced mechanical timers & counters. Due to use of electronics space and energy requirements reduced, maintenance requirement reduced & systems were more reliable.