Participants:

Junior Pochet 20160959

Juan Isidro De Leon 20170167
Ramon Perez Diaz 20171218

Subject:
English Level X.

Professor:
Carlos Vicente De Los Santos.

Topic:
INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION.
 Introduction
Automation is the creation of technology and its application in
order to control and monitor the production and delivery of
various goods and services. It performs tasks that were previously
performed by humans. Automation is being used in a number of
areas such as manufacturing, transport, utilities, defense,
facilities, operations and lately, information technology.
Automation can be performed in many ways in various
industries. For example, in the information technology domain, a
software script can test a software product and produce a report.
In this work we introduce the information about the industrial
automation that started with the electrical control using
contactors, relays and other electromechanical devices to create
a system that worked to create a semi-automatic system that
helped to get a faster product at the end.
Automation is evolving quickly and business intelligence in
applications is a new form of high-quality automation. The actual
automation use PLC and CPUs to control loops.
Automation
Automation is the technology by which a process or procedure is
performed with minimal human assistance. Automation or
automatic control is the use of various control systems for
operating equipment such as machinery, processes in factories,
boilers and heat treating ovens, switching on telephone networks,
steering and stabilization of ships, aircraft and other applications
and vehicles with minimal or reduced human intervention.
Automation covers applications ranging from a household
thermostat controlling a boiler, to a large industrial control
system with tens of thousands of input measurements and
output control signals. In control complexity, it can range from
simple on-off control to multi-variable high-level algorithms.
In the simplest type of an automatic control loop, a controller
compares a measured value of a process with a desired set value,
and processes the resulting error signal to change some input to
the process, in such a way that the process stays at its set point
despite disturbances. This closed-loop control is an application
of negative feedback to a system. The mathematical basis of
control theory was begun in the 18th century and advanced
rapidly in the 20th.
Automation has been achieved by various means including
mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic devices
and computers, usually in combination. Complicated systems,
such as modern factories, airplanes and ships typically use all
these combined techniques. The benefit of automation includes
labor savings, savings in electricity costs, savings in material
costs, and improvements to quality, accuracy, and precision.
Control system
A control system manages, commands, directs, or regulates the
behavior of other devices or systems using control loops. It can
range from a single home heating controller using a thermostat
controlling a domestic boiler to large Industrial control systems
which are used for controlling processes or machines.
For continuously modulated control, a feedback controller is
used to automatically control a process or operation. The control
system compares the value or status of the process variable (PV)
being controlled with the desired value or set point (SP), and
applies the difference as a control signal to bring the process
variable output of the plant to the same value as the set point.
For sequential and combinational logic, software logic, such as in
a programmable logic controller, is used.
Open-loop and closed-loop control
There are two common classes of control action: open loop and
closed loop. In an open-loop control system, the control action
from the controller is independent of the process variable. An
example of this is a central heating boiler controlled only by a
timer. The control action is the switching on or off of the boiler.
The process variable is the building temperature. This controller
operates the heating system for a constant time regardless of the
temperature of the building.

Feedback control systems

In the case of linear feedback systems, a control loop including

sensors, control algorithms, and actuators is arranged in an
attempt to regulate a variable at a set point (SP). An everyday
example is the cruise control on a road vehicle; where external
influences such as hills would cause speed changes, and the
driver has the ability to alter the desired set speed. The PID
algorithm in the controller restores the actual speed to the
desired speed in the optimum way, with minimal delay or
overshoot, by controlling the power output of the vehicle's engine.
Logic control

Logic control systems for industrial and commercial machinery

were historically implemented by interconnected electrical relays
and cam timers using ladder logic. Today, most such systems are
constructed with microcontrollers or more specialized
programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The notation of ladder
logic is still in use as a programming method for PLCs.

Logic controllers may respond to switches and sensors, and can

cause the machinery to start and stop various operations through
the use of actuators. Logic controllers are used to sequence
mechanical operations in many applications. Examples include
elevators, washing machines and other systems with interrelated
operations. An automatic sequential control system may trigger
a series of mechanical actuators in the correct sequence to
perform a task. For example, various electric and pneumatic
transducers may fold and glue a cardboard box, fill it with
product and then seal it in an automatic packaging machine.
On–off control
On–off control uses a feedback controller that switches abruptly
between two states. A simple bi-metallic domestic thermostat can
be described as an on-off controller. When the temperature in the
room (PV) goes below the user setting (SP), the heater is switched
on. Another example is a pressure switch on an air compressor.
When the pressure (PV) drops below the set point (SP) the
compressor is powered. Refrigerators and vacuum pumps
contain similar mechanisms. Simple on–off control systems like
these can be cheap and effective.
Linear control
 Proportional control

Proportional control is a type of linear feedback control system in

which a correction is applied to the controlled variable which is
proportional to the difference between the desired value (SP) and
the measured value (PV). Two classic mechanical examples are
the toilet bowl float proportioning valve and the fly-ball governor.
 PID control

Pure proportional controllers must operate with residual error in

the system. Though PI controllers eliminate this error they can
still be sluggish or produce oscillations. The PID controller
addresses these final shortcomings by introducing a derivative
(D) action to retain stability while responsiveness is improved.
Industrial Automation

Industrial Automation is the replacement with computers and

machines to that of human thinking. The word Automation gives
the meaning ‘self-dictating’ or ‘a mechanism moves by itself’ that
derived from the Greek Words Auto and Matos where auto means
self while Matos means moving.
In a brief, industrial automation can be defined as the use of set
technologies and automatic control devices that results the
automatic operation and control of industrial processes without
significant human intervention and achieving superior
performance than manual control. These automation devices
include PLCs, PCs, PACs, etc. and technologies include various
industrial communication systems.
The above figure shows the power plant automation provided by
Siemens for achieving sustainable, safe and economic operations.
It provides the total integrated automation (TIA) by automating
every section of power plant with efficient control devices, field
sensors and actuating devices. In this automation, SIMATIC
modules (PLCs) are used as control devices while WinCC provides
an effective graphical interface.
Advantages of Automation System
 To increase productivity

Automation of factory or manufacturing or process plant

improves production rate through a better control of production.
It helps to produce mass production by drastically reducing
assembly time per product with a greater production quality.
Therefore, for a given labor input it produces a large amount of
output.
 To provide optimum cost of operation
Integration of various processes in industry with automated
machineries, minimizes cycle times and effort and hence the need
of human labor gets reduced. Thus the investment on employees
has been saved with automation.
 To improve product quality
Since the automation reduces the human involvement, the
possibility of human errors also gets eliminated. Uniformity and
product quality with a greater conformity can be maintained with
automation by adaptively controlling and monitoring the
industrial processes in all stages right from inception of a product
to an end product.
 To reduce routine checks
Automation completely reduces the need for manual checking of
various process parameters. By taking advantage of automation
technologies, industrial processes automatically adjust process
variables to set or desired values using closed loop control
techniques.
 To raise the level of safety
Industrial automation increases the level of safety to personnel
by substituting them with automated machines in hazardous
working conditions. Traditionally, industrial robots and robotic
devices are implemented in such risky and hazardous places.
Types of Industrial Automation Systems

 Fixed or Hard Automation

This type of automation is employed to perform fixed and
repetitive operations in order to achieve high production rates. It
uses special purpose or dedicated equipment to automate the
fixed sequence assembling or processing operations. Once it is
employed, it is relatively hard to change or vary the product
design. Therefore, it is inflexible in providing product variety, but
increases the efficiency with higher production rate and reduces
unit cost.

 Programmable Automation
In this automation, a specific class of product changes and also
assembling or processing operations can be changed with the
modification of control program in the automated equipment.
This automation is best suited for batch production process
where product volume is medium to high. But in this, it is hard
to change and reconfigure the system for a new product or
sequence of operations. Therefore, new product or reconfigure of
sequence of operations requires a long setup.
Examples of this automation system are numerically controlled
machines, paper mills, steel rolling mills, industrial robots, etc.

 Flexible or Soft Automation

This automation system provides the automatic control
equipment that offers a great flexibility for making changes in the
product design. These changes can be performed quickly through
the commands given in the form of codes by the human
operators.
This automation allows the manufacturers to produce multiple
products with different ranges as a combined combination
process rather than separate.
Hierarchy of an Industrial Automation System
Industrial automation systems can be very complex in nature,
having large number of devices working in synchronization with
automation technologies. The figure below describes the
hierarchical arrangement of the automation system consisting of
different hierarchical levels.
 Field Level
It is the lowest level of the automation hierarchy which includes
the field devices like sensors and actuators. The main task of
these field devices is to transfer the data of processes and
machines to the next higher level for monitoring and analysis.
And also it includes the controlling of process parameter through
actuators. For instance, we can describe this level as eyes and
arms of a particular process.
Sensors convert the real time parameters like temperature,
pressure, flow, level, etc into electrical signals. This sensor data
further transferred to the controller so as to monitor and analyze
the real time parameters. Some of the sensors include
thermocouple, proximity sensors, RTDs, flow meters, etc.
On other hand actuators converts the electrical signals (from the
controllers) into mechanical means to control the processes. Flow
control valves, solenoid valves, pneumatic actuators, relays, DC
motors and servo motors are the examples of actuators.

 Control Level
This level consists of various automation devices like CNC
machines, PLCs, etc., which acquires the process parameters
from various sensors. The automatic controllers drive the
actuators based on the processed sensor signals and program or
control technique.
Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are most widely used
robust industrial controllers which are capable of delivering
automatic control functions based on input from sensors. It
consists of various modules like CPU, analog I/O, digital I/O and
communication modules. It allows the operator to program a
control function or strategy to perform certain automatic
operation on process.
Programmable logic controller
A programmable logic controller (PLC) or programmable
controller is an industrial digital computer which has been
ruggedized and adapted for the control of manufacturing
processes, such as assembly lines, or robotic devices, or any
activity that requires high reliability, ease of programming and
process fault diagnosis.
PLCs can range from small modular devices with tens of inputs
and outputs (I/O), in a housing integral with the processor, to
large rack-mounted modular devices with a count of thousands
of I/O, and which are often networked to other PLC and SCADA
systems.
They can be designed for many arrangements of digital and
analog I/O, extended temperature ranges, immunity to electrical
noise, and resistance to vibration and impact. Programs to
control machine operation are typically stored in battery-backed-
up or non-volatile memory.
PLCs were first developed in the automobile manufacturing
industry to provide flexible, rugged and easily programmable
controllers to replace hard-wired relays. Since then, they have
been widely adopted as high-reliability automation controllers
suitable for harsh environments.
A PLC is an example of a "hard" real-time system since output
results must be produced in response to input conditions within
a limited time, otherwise unintended operation will result.

PLC originated in the late 1960s in the automotive industry in

the USA and were designed to replace relay logic systems. Before,
control logic for manufacturing was mainly composed of relays,
cam timers, drum sequencers, and dedicated closed-loop
controllers. The hard-wired nature made it difficult for design
engineers to alter the process. Even small changes would require
rewiring and careful updating of the documentation. If even one
wire were out of place, or one relay failed, the whole system would
become faulty. Often times technicians would spend hours
troubleshooting by examining the schematics and comparing
them to existing wiring. When general-purpose computers
became available, they were soon applied to control sequential
and combinatorial logic in industrial processes.
These early computers required specialist programmers and
strict control of working conditions, such as temperature,
cleanliness, and power quality.
To meet these challenges, the PLC was developed with several
advantages over earlier designs. It would tolerate the industrial
environment, be easily extensible with additional I/O (allow for
easier reconfiguration and iteration over manufacturing process
design), be relatively simple to use, and would permit its
operation to be monitored.
Early PLCs were programmed in "ladder logic", which strongly
resembles a schematic diagram of relay logic. This program
notation was chosen to reduce training demands for the existing
technicians. Other PLCs used a form of instruction list
programming, based on a stack-based logic solver.
Programming
PLC programs are typically written in a special software on a
personal computer, then downloaded to the PLC directly or over
a network. The program is stored in the PLC either in non-volatile
flash memory or battery-backed-up RAM. In some programmable
controllers, the program is transferred from a personal computer
to the PLC through a programming board which writes the
program into a removable chip, such as EPROM. The software
can upload the PLC program, for backup and restoration
purposes. Generally, the software provides functions for
debugging and troubleshooting the PLC software, for example, by
highlighting portions of the logic to show current status during
operation or via simulation.
The majority of PLC systems today adhere to the IEC 61131-3
control systems programming standard that defines 4 languages:
Ladder Diagram (LD; resembles the schematic diagram of a
system built with electromechanical relays), Structured Text (ST;
similar to Pascal), Function Block Diagram (FBD) and Sequential
Function Chart (SFC). Instruction List (IL) was deprecated in the
third edition of the standard.
Modern PLCs can be programmed in a variety of ways, from the
relay-derived ladder logic to programming languages such as
specially adapted dialects of BASIC and C. Another method is
state logic, a very high-level programming language designed to
program PLCs based on state transition diagrams. The most
commonly used programming language is Ladder Diagram (LD)
also known as Ladder logic.
While the fundamental concepts of PLC programming are
common to all manufacturers, differences in I/O addressing,
memory organization, and instruction sets mean that PLC
programs are never perfectly interchangeable between different
makers. Even within the same product line of a single
manufacturer, different models may not be directly compatible.
  Supervising and Production Control Level
In this level, automatic devices and monitoring system facilitates
the controlling and intervening functions like Human Machine
Interface (HMI), supervising various parameters, setting
production targets, historical archiving, setting machine start
and shutdown, etc.
Mostly, either Distribution Control System (DCS) or Supervisory
Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) HMIs are popularly used
in this level.
Human-machine interface
The human-machine interface (HMI) is the operator window of
the supervisory system. It presents plant information to the
operating personnel graphically in the form of mimic diagrams,
which are a schematic representation of the plant being
controlled, and alarm and event logging pages. The HMI is linked
to the SCADA supervisory computer to provide live data to drive
the mimic diagrams, alarm displays and trending graphs. In
many installations the HMI is the graphical user interface for the
operator, collects all data from external devices, creates reports,
performs alarming, sends notifications, etc.
Mimic diagrams consist of line graphics and schematic symbols
to represent process elements, or may consist of digital
photographs of the process equipment overlain with animated
symbols.
Supervisory operation of the plant is by means of the HMI, with
operators issuing commands using mouse pointers, keyboards
and touch screens. For example, a symbol of a pump can show
the operator that the pump is running, and a flow meter symbol
can show how much fluid it is pumping through the pipe. The
operator can switch the pump off from the mimic by a mouse
click or screen touch. The HMI will show the flow rate of the fluid
in the pipe decrease in real time.
  Information or Enterprise Level
This is the top level of the industrial automation which manages
the whole automation system. The tasks of this level include
production planning, customer and market analysis, orders and
sales, etc. So it deals more with commercial activities and less
with technical aspects.
And also industrial communication networks are most prominent
in industrial automation systems which transfer the information
from one level to the other. So these are present in all the levels
of automation system to provide continuous flow of information.
This communication network can be different one level to the
other. Some of these networks include RS485, CAN, DeviceNet,
Foundation Field bus, Profibus, etc.
From the above hierarchy we can conclude that there is
continuous information flow from high level to low level and vice-
versa. If we assume this graphical way, it is like a pyramid in
which as we go up, the information gets aggregated and while
going down, we get detailed information about the process.
 Conclusion
Automation is of great importance in modern industry, this is
what allows all processes to be performed in a fast and skillful
way to create a huge variety of products that are at a defined
quality level and with permissible tolerances.
Automation is undoubtedly what made our civilization advance
so much in the creation of mass devices, but all this could not be
implemented without the invention of programmable logical
control systems that although currently are being outdated by
the CPUs it has More power and a greater range of
implementation, the PLCs continue to be of great importance and
to this day they continue to be the majority of the current
industrial sector.
Automation technology has matured to a point where a number
of other technologies have developed from it and have achieved a
recognition and status of their own. Robotics is one of these
technologies; it is a specialized branch of automation in which
the automated machine possesses certain anthropomorphic, or
humanlike, characteristics.
 References.
 https://www.britannica.com/technology/automation
 https://www.techopedia.com/definition/32099/automatio
n
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_system
 https://www.surecontrols.com/what-is-industrial-
automation/
 https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2015/09/what-is-
industrial-automation.html
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_engineering
 https://www.isa.org/about-isa/what-is-automation/