Automation (ancient Greek: = self dictated), roboticization^[1] or industrial automation or numerical control is the use of control systems such as computers to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention. KUKA Robotics and its German parent company KUKA is one of the world's leading manufacturers of Industrial robots and automation systems for a variety of industries The Ancient Greek language is the historical stage in the development of the Hellenic language family spanning the Archaic (c Numerical control or numerically controlled ( NC) Machine tools are machines that are automatically operated by commands encoded on a Digital medium A control system is a device or set of devices to manage command direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or systems A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. For other uses of this term see Industry (disambiguation An industry (from Latin industrius, "diligent industrious" A machine is any device that uses Energy to perform some activity Industrial processes are procedures involving chemical or mechanical steps to aid in the Manufacture of an item or items usually carried out on a very ^[2] In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. is a process of social and economic change whereby a human group is transformed from a Pre-industrial society into an industrial one Mechanization or mechanisation ( BE) is providing human operators with machinery to assist them with the physical requirements of work Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the physical requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated.

Automation plays an increasingly important role in the global economy and in daily experience. The rising Technology has allowed our environment to be characterized as a global one Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities.

There are still many roles for humans in industrial processes that 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. Pattern recognition is a sub-topic of Machine learning. It is "the act of taking in raw data and taking an action based on the category of the data" Language recognition is a field of Artificial intelligence which enables Computers to recognise Language of a text. 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.

Specialised hardened computers, referred to as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events. A programmable logic controller ( PLC) or programmable controller is a Digital computer used for Automation of industrial processes such as A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an instrument This leads to precisely controlled actions that permit a tight control of almost any industrial process. Industrial processes are procedures involving chemical or mechanical steps to aid in the Manufacture of an item or items usually carried out on a very

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, such as entering and monitoring temperatures or pressures for further automated control or emergency response. Human–computer interaction or HCI is the study of interaction between people ( users and Computers It is often regarded as the intersection of Users in a Computing context refers to one who uses a computer system Temperature control is a process in which the temperature of an object is measured and the passage of heat energy into or out of the object is adjusted to achieve a desired temperature Service personnel who monitor and control these interfaces are often referred to as stationary engineers. ^[3]

Contents 1 Social impact 2 Current emphases 3 Safety issues of industrial automation 4 Automation tools 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

Social impact

Automation has had a notable impact in a wide range of highly visible industries beyond manufacturing. Once-ubiquitous telephone operators have been replaced largely by automated telephone switchboards and answering machines. A telephone operator is either a person who provides assistance to a Telephone caller usually in the placing of Operator assisted telephone A switchboard (also called a manual exchange) was a device used to connect a group of Telephones manually to one another or to an outside connection within and between 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. For medical radiography see Radiology Radiography is the use of X-rays to view unseen or hard-to-image objects History See also History of genetics The existence of genes was first suggested by Gregor Mendel (1822-1884 who in the 1860s studied inheritance Blood plasma is the Liquid component of Blood, in which the Blood cells are suspended The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known living Organisms It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living and is often called Tissue is a cellular organizational level intermediate between cells and a complete organism 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 agrarian to industrial in the 19th century and from industrial to services in the 20th century. ^[4]

The widespread impact of industrial automation raises social issues, among them its impact on employment. Employment is a Contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. Historical concerns about the effects of automation date back to the beginning of the industrial revolution, when a social movement of English textile machine operators in the early 1800s known as the Luddites protested against Jacquard's automated weaving looms^[5] — often by destroying such textile machines— that they felt threatened their jobs. The Luddites were a Social movement of British Textile artisans in the early Nineteenth century who protested&mdashoften by destroying mechanized One author made the following case. When automation was first introduced, it caused widespread fear. It was thought that the displacement of human operators by computerized systems would lead to severe unemployment. In Mathematics, an operator is a function which operates on (or modifies another function Unemployment occurs when a person is available to work and currently seeking work but the person is without work.

Critics of automation contend that increased industrial automation causes increased unemployment; this was a pressing concern during the 1980s. One argument claims that this has happened invisibly in recent years, as the fact that many manufacturing jobs left the United States during the early 1990s was offset by a one-time massive increase in IT jobs at the same time. Information technology ( IT) as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA is "the study design development implementation support Some authors argue that the opposite has often been true, and that automation has led to higher employment. Under this point of view, the freeing up of the labour force has allowed more people to enter higher skilled managerial as well as specialised consultant/contractor jobs (like cryptographers), which are typically higher paying. Cryptography (or cryptology; from Greek grc κρυπτός kryptos, "hidden secret" and grc γράφω gráphō, "I write" One odd side effect of this shift is that "unskilled labour" is in higher demand in many first-world nations, because fewer people are available to fill such jobs. The term " first world " refers to countries that are capitalist, which are technologically advanced and whose

At first glance, automation might appear to devalue labor through its replacement with less-expensive machines; however, the overall effect of this on the workforce as a whole remains unclear. Today automation of the workforce is quite advanced, and continues to advance increasingly more rapidly throughout the world and is encroaching on ever more skilled jobs, yet during the same period the general well-being and quality of life of most people in the world (where political factors have not muddied the picture) have improved dramatically. What role automation has played in these changes has not been well studied.

Current emphases

Currently, for manufacturing companies, the purpose of automation has shifted from increasing productivity and reducing costs, to broader issues, such as increasing quality and flexibility in the manufacturing process.

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 pistons used to be installed into engines manually. A piston is a component of Reciprocating engines Pumps and Gas compressors It is located in a cylinder and is made gas-tight by Piston The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the Combustion of Fuel and an Oxidizer (typically air occurs in a confined space called a 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. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the manufacturing of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metal working, were always early contenders for automation. An oil refinery is an industrial Process plant where Crude oil is processed and refined into more useful Petroleum products, such as Gasoline The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals Metalworking is craft and practice of working with Metals to create individual parts assemblies or large scale structures

Another major shift in automation is the increased emphasis on flexibility and convertibility in the manufacturing process. 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. For the Detroit Red Wings scoring line see Production line (hockey A production line is a set of sequential operations established Flexibility and distributed processes have led to the introduction of Automated Guided Vehicles with Natural Features Navigation. The automated guided vehicle or automatic guided vehicle (AGV is a mobile Robot used in industrial applications to move materials around a manufacturing facility

Safety issues of industrial automation

One safety issue with automation is that while it is often viewed as a way to minimize human error in a system, increasing the degree and levels of automation also increases the consequences of error. For example, The Three Mile Island nuclear event was largely due to over-reliance on "automated safety" systems. Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station is a civilian Nuclear power plant located on an island (Three Mile Island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg Unfortunately, in the event, the designers had never anticipated the actual failure mode which occurred, so both the "automated safety" systems and their human overseers were inundated with vast amounts of largely irrelevant information. With automation we have machines designed by (fallible) people with high levels of expertise, which operate at speeds well beyond human ability to react, being operated by people with relatively more limited education (or other failings, as in the Bhopal disaster or Chernobyl disaster). The Bhopal disaster was an Industrial disaster that occurred in the city of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, resulting in the immediate deaths The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union. Ultimately, with increasing levels of automation over ever larger domains of activities, when something goes wrong the consequences rapidly approach the catastrophic. This is true for all complex systems however, and one of the major goals of safety engineering for nuclear reactors, for example, is to make safety mechanisms as simple and as foolproof as possible (see Safety engineering and passive safety). This article is a subarticle of Nuclear power. A nuclear reactor is a device in which Nuclear chain reactions are initiated controlled Safety engineering is an applied science strongly related to Systems engineering and the subset System Safety Engineering Passive Nuclear safety describes a safety feature of a Nuclear reactor that does not require operator action or electronic feedback in order to shut down safely in

Automation tools

Different types of automation tools exists:

• ANN - Artificial neural network
• DCS - Distributed Control System
• HMI - Human Machine Interface
• LIMS - Laboratory Information Management System
• MES - Manufacturing Execution System
• PAC - Programmable automation controller
• PLC - Programmable Logic Controller
• SCADA - Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System
• Fieldbus
• Simulation

See also

References

Further reading

• Jeremy Rifkin: The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era
• Ramin Ramtin: Capitalism and Automation - Revolution in Technology and Capitalist Breakdown. Jeremy Rifkin (born 1943, Denver Colorado) the founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET is an American economist writer and public Pluto Press, London, Concord Mass. 1991

External links

• IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering

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