Automation is the use of control systems and information
technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and
services. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond
mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to
assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly
decreases the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well.
Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in
daily experience.
Automation has had a notable impact in a wide range of
industries beyond manufacturing (where it began). Once-ubiquitous telephone
operators have been replaced largely by automated telephone switchboards and
answering machines. Medical processes such as primary screening in
electrocardiography or radiography and laboratory analysis of human genes,
sera, cells, and tissues are carried out at much greater speed and accuracy by
automated systems. Automated teller machines have reduced the need for bank
visits to obtain cash and carry out transactions. In general, automation has
been responsible for the shift in the world economy from industrial jobs to service
jobs in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Advantages and
disadvantage
The main advantages of
automation are:
§ Replacing human operators in tasks that involve hard
physical or monotonous work.
§ Replacing humans in tasks done in dangerous environments (i.e.
fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, underwater, etc.)
§ Performing tasks that are beyond human
capabilities of size, weight, speed, endurance, etc.
§ Economy improvement. Automation may improve in
economy of enterprises, society or most of humanity. For example, when an
enterprise invests in automation, technology recovers its investment; or when a
state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the 20th Century.
The main disadvantages
of automation are:
§ Technology limits. Current technology is
unable to automate all the desired tasks.
§ Unpredictable development costs. The research and development cost
of automating a process may exceed the cost saved by the automation itself.
§ High initial cost. The automation of a
new product or plant requires a huge initial investment in comparison
with the unit cost of the product, although the cost of automation is spread in
many product batches.
Goals of automation (beyond productivity gains
and cost reduction)
In manufacturing, the purpose of automation has shifted to issues
broader than productivity and costs.
Reliability and precision
The old focus on using
automation simply to increase productivity and reduce costs was seen to be
short-sighted, because it is also necessary to provide a skilled workforce who
can make repairs and manage the machinery. Moreover, the initial costs of
automation were high and often could not be recovered by the time entirely new
manufacturing processes replaced the old. (Japan's "robot junkyards"
were once world famous in the manufacturing industry.)
Automation is now often applied primarily to
increase quality in the manufacturing process, where automation can increase
quality substantially. For example, automobile and truck pistonsused to be
installed into engines manually. This is rapidly being transitioned
to automated machine installation, because the error rate for manual
installment was around 1-1.5%, but has been reduced to 0.00001% with
automation.
Health and environment
The costs of automation to
the environment are different depending on the technology, product or engine
automated. There are automated engines that consume more energy resources from
the Earth in comparison with previous engines and those that do the opposite
too. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the manufacturing
of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metal working, were always
early contenders for automation.
Convertibility and turnaround time
Another major shift in automation is the increased demand for
flexibility and convertibility in manufacturing processes. Manufacturers are
increasingly demanding the ability to easily switch from manufacturing Product
A to manufacturing Product B without having to completely rebuild the production
lines. Flexibility and distributed processes have led to the introduction
ofAutomated Guided Vehicles with Natural Features Navigation.
Digital electronics helped too. Former
analogue-based instrumentation was replaced by digital equivalents which can be
more accurate and flexible, and offer greater scope for more sophisticated
configuration, parametrization and operation. This was accompanied by
the fieldbus revolution which provided a networked (i.e. a single
cable) means of communicating between control systems and field level
instrumentation, eliminating hard-wiring.
Discrete manufacturing plants adopted these
technologies fast. The more conservative process industries with their longer
plant life cycles have been slower to adopt and analogue-based measurement and
control still dominates. The growing use of Industrial Ethernet on
the factory floor is pushing these trends still further, enabling manufacturing
plants to be integrated more tightly within the enterprise, via the internet if
necessary. Global competition has also increased demand for Reconfigurable
Manufacturing Systems.
Automation tools
Engineers now can have numerical
control over automated devices. The result has been a rapidly expanding
range of applications and human activities. Computer-aided
technologies (or CAx) now serve the basis for mathematical and
organizational tools used to create complex systems. Notable examples of CAx
include Computer-aided design (CAD software) and Computer-aided
manufacturing (CAM software). The improved design, analysis, and
manufacture of products enabled by CAx has been beneficial for industry.
Information technology, together
with industrial machinery and processes, can assist in the
design, implementation, and monitoring of control systems. One example of
an industrial control system is a programmable logic
controller (PLC). PLCs are specialized hardened computers which are
frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from
(physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators
and events.
Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human
interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces,
are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers. Service
personnel who monitor and control through HMIs can be called by different
names. In industrial process and manufacturing environments, they are called
operators or something similar. In boiler houses and central utilities
departments they are called stationary engineers.
Different types of automation tools exist:
§ ANN - Artificial neural network
§ DCS - Distributed Control System
§ HMI - Human Machine Interface
§ SCADA - Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
§ PLC - Programmable Logic Controller
§ PAC - Programmable automation controller
§ Instrumentation
§ Motion control
§ Robotics
Current limits
Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond
the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language
recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities
of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective
assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as
well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human
expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than
mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible
Applications of Automation
§ Automated Video surveillance:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) started the
research and development of automated Visual surveillance and Monitoring (VSAM)
program 1997-99 and airborne Video Surveillance (AVS) program 1998-2002.
Currently there is a major effort underway in the vision community to develop a
fully automated tracking surveillance system. Automated video
surveillance monitors people and vehicle in real time within a busy
environment. Existing automated surveillance systems are based on the
environment they are primarily designed to observe, i.e., indoor, outdoor or
airborne, the amount of sensors that the automated system can handle and the
mobility of sensor, i.e., stationary camera vs. mobile camera. The purpose of a
surveillance system is to record properties and trajectories of objects in a
given area, generate warnings or notify designated authority in case of
occurrence of particular events.
§ Automated Highway Systems:
As demands for safety and mobility have grown and technological
possibilities have multiplied, interest in automation have grown. Seeking to
accelerate the development and introduction of fully automated vehicles and
highways, The United States Congress authorized more than $650
million over 6 years for intelligent transport systems (ITS) and
demonstration projects in the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation
Efficiency Act (ISTEA). Congress legislated in ISTEA that “The secretary
[of transportation] shall develop an automated highway and vehicle prototype
from which future fully automated intelligent vehicle-highway systems can be
developed. Such development shall include research in human factors to ensure
the success of the man-machine relationship. The goal of this program is to
have the first fully automated highway roadway or an automated test track in
operation by 1997. This system shall accommodate installation of equipment in
new and existing motor vehicles." [ISTEA 1991, part B, Section 6054(b)].
Full automation commonly defined as requiring no control or very
limited control by the driver; such automation would be accomplished through a
combination of sensor, computer, and communications systems in vehicles and
along the roadway. Fully automated driving would, in theory, allow closer
vehicle spacing and higher speeds, which could enhance traffic capacity in
places where additional road building is physically impossible, politically
unacceptable, or prohibitively expensive. Automated controls also might enhance
road safety by reducing the opportunity for driver error, which causes a large
share of motor vehicle crashes. Other potential benefits include improved air
quality (as a result of more-efficient traffic flows), increased fuel economy,
and spin-off technologies generated during research and development related to
automated highway systems.
§ Automated manufacturing:
Automated manufacturing refers to the application of automation to
produce things in the factory way. Most of the advantages of the automation
technology has its influence in the manufacture processes.
The main advantage of the automated manufacturing are:
higher consistency and quality, reduce the lead times, simplification of
production, reduce handling, improve work flow and increase the morale of
workers when a good implementation of the automation is made.
§ Home Automation
Home automation (also
called domotics) designates an emerging practice of increased automation of
household appliances and features in residential dwellings, particularly
through electronic means that allow for things impracticable, overly expensive
or simply not possible in recent past decades
