Preface
You see it all the time: a new head of a department, or of acompany for that matter, comes into a new position in theindustrial automation environment from a different industry. Thepress release talks in glowing terms of the skills and capabilitiesthe new office holder had in his or her previous position. Thisperson “will leverage his strengths and capabilities to help usherin a new era.” They have to hit the ground running and startproducing yesterday.
However, there is a catch. Over the past fifty years, the fieldof industrial automation has evolved from a number of independenttechnical fields, such as instrumentation, electronics,maintenance, plant operations and computer science. Thesetraditionally independent fields converged to form today’sindustrial automation. This convergence contributes to making thestudy of industrial automation much more confusing than it reallyshould be. Part of the reason for this is that any technology-basedarea of study has its own idiosyncratic terminology, jargon, andslang, including acronyms. This can provide a huge barrier todeveloping a functional understanding for anyone walking into theindustry. As a mathematics professor proclaimed to a classfinishing their first year of graduate school, “We spent the firstyear learning the words and now it’s time to learn some math.”There is more truth to this than any of us might like to admit.
When the digital computer showed promise as a tool to solveindustrial automation problems, the lexicon of computer technologymerged with the lexicon of pneumatic and electronic instrumentationand control systems. It was not surprising that instrumentcompanies divided into two groups, the instrument and controlexperts and the computer gurus. These two groups had greatdifficulty talking to each other because they did not have a commonlanguage. Sometimes the same acronym had two very differentmeanings. SPC to the computer professionals in automation companiesmay have meant set point control while to the operationally focusedteam it meant statistical process control.
To exacerbate this situation, a considerable amount of thetechnology and terminology associated with industrial automationcomes from digital computer markets and technologies. The reasonthis adds a level of confusion is that computer science is onetechnical field in which the terminology is not driven byacademics; rather it is driven by marketing departments. DigitalEquipment Corporation introduced their Programmable Data Processor(PDP) series of computers to the marketplace a number of years agoas the world’s first minicomputer. The word minicomputer became apart of Digital’s marketing campaign. Digital intentionally did notdefine this word because by not defining it they could more easilyclaim, without having to technically justify their position, thatcompeting computer companies did not really make a minicomputer.College professors spent the next twenty years trying to develop atechnical definition for “minicomputer,” and to the best of theauthors’ knowledge they were never truly successful. Thischaracteristic of the lexicon has resulted in a set of words andphrases in industrial automation like distributed control system(DCS), programmable logic controller (PLC), and manufacturingexecution system (MES) to name only a few; terms used daily, butnot well defined.
There are aspects of industrial automation based on rich anddeep technology that require considerable in-depth study tounderstand them, but from a functional perspective most ofindustrial automation is pretty straightforward. The catch is thatthe field is dominated by technologists who cannot help but tryexplaining relatively simple issues in excruciating technicaldetail, causing many an eye to glaze over.
There are a slew of books that provide detailed explanations ofeach of the major aspects of industrial automation, including allthe mathematics and formulas and dynamic models. These areimportant books for those getting into the heavy detail. But theend result is that without a preliminary understanding ofindustrial automation, these are very difficult to comprehend.
Our purpose in writing this book is to provide a basicfunctional understanding of industrial automation. It has been verytempting to delve into technical details in a number of topics, butthat is not what this book is all about.
There are people moving into industrial automation as part oftheir professional development. That movement includes, but is notlimited to, executives who have come into industrial automationafter leading companies in other markets. That level of change isgood for industrial automation as new approaches and ideas oftenaccompany new talent. We find that there are many people becomingassociated with the world of industrial automation from a varietyof other related disciplines, such as information technology oraccounting, who require a basic level of understanding ofautomation to perform their job functions more effectively. Thesepeople who are new to this field need a way to quickly educatethemselves with the technology and terminology; time is of theessence. We hope this book fills that need.
We have structured the material in this book to progress fromthe most basic subject matter through more advanced automationtopics. Depending on your background and level of exposure tomanufacturing processes and automation, you may want to considerskipping over some of the earlier chapters and proceed directly tothe chapters of prime interest.
- Edition:
- 10
- Published:
- 01/01/2010
- Number of Pages:
- 234
- File Size:
- 1 file , 8.8 MB
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