Automation

AUTOMATION

The term «automation» comes from automatic production and has been applied to various manufacturing areas. These areas, which have mostly remained independent of each other, refer to:

1. Production systems where materials are moved through the steps needed for an industrial process with little or no human assistance.

2. Control systems that automatically maintain the performance of a process within the desired limits. In these systems, sensor devices pick up the relevant parameters describing the process and that information is used to feed the appropriate control actions to the machinery.

3. Data processing systems where information is stored, selected and logically or mathematically processed so as to increase the efficiency of a manufacturing process over its different phases: design, prototyping, implementation, testing, etc.

Automation in the factory may be carried out in two ways: as a fully continuous process or in batches. The first one is mainly found in chemical, paper and power industries where continuous production is required. The second one is commonly used in manufacturing industries, such as car factories, and it is usually identified with robotics.

Due to the widespread introduction of microcomputers and the improvements of the price performance ratio of minicomputers, automation has largely extended its field of application and consequently the concept of automation has increased its complexity. Fashionable acronyms such as CAD (computer aided design) and CAM (computer aided manufacturing) integrate through a computer system several of the automation concepts above described. The usage of CAD/CAM techniques brings nearer the goal of achieving a fully automatic production process, known as CIM (computer-integrated manufacturing).

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