Industrial Automation: A Brief History of Manufacturing Application & The

Current State and Future Outlook

With the technology and automation available to us today, the opportunities to share
information are unlimited. The industry realizes that and is working together to figure
out how to communicate electronically with each other.

Industrial Automation has a few key segments. In the 1970's, the original DCS was
developed in the 1970's by a team of engineers at Honeywell, and the first PLC was
the brainchild of inventor Dick Morley and others. Several innovative start-ups
developed HMI software for PLCs and industrial I/O. Innovative sensors and
actuators came from some key companies. In a fragmented business, most
innovators get stuck at growth plateaus and are bought out. But some continue to
generate independent growth and success.

Trace the roots of all significant automation business segments and you'll find key
people and innovations. Industrial instrumentation and controls has always been a
hotbed of new products - improved sensors, amplifiers, displays, recorders, control
elements, valves, actuators and other widgets and gismos. But the markets are
relatively small, specialized and fragmented, and it's rare that any significant volume
results directly from individual products. This model of business is greatly seen in
technical sales as well.

Many industrial automation companies were founded with innovative developments

for niche applications. The target customers were usually local end-users who
provided the opportunity to test new ideas, usually because of specific unmet needs.
The successful start-ups expanded their products and markets beyond initially narrow
applications and geographies, depending on the real value of the innovation, and also
whether or not the founder was able to hire suitable management, sales & marketing
leaders to grow the company beyond the initial entrepreneurial stages.

Since automation is such a fragmented business, all the larger (multi-billion $)

companies are mostly a conglomeration of products and services; each product
segment generates relatively small volume, but lumped together they form sizable
businesses.

What is Industrial Automation?

According to Wikipedia automation is:

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 in telephone networks, steering and stabilization of ships, aircraft
and other applications with minimal or reduced human intervention. Some processes
have been completely automated.

The term automation, inspired by the earlier word automatic (coming from
automaton), was not widely used before 1947, when General Motors established the
automation department. It was during this time that industry was rapidly adopting
feedback controllers, which were introduced in the 1930s.

Automation has been achieved by various means including mechanical, hydraulic,

pneumatic, electrical, electronic and computers, usually in combination. Complicated
systems, such as modern factories, airplanes and ships typically use all these
combined techniques.

Industrial engineers have envisioned fully automated factories since at least the
middle of the 20th century. But the real race to automate manufacturing can be said
to have begun in the 1980s, when US car manufacturers came up with the vision of
lights-out manufacturing. The idea was to beat their rivals by automating the
factories to such an extent that the entire manufacturing process could be left to
robots. To a great extent, it has remained only a vision so far.

What is Industrial Automation in Manufacturing?

Industrial automation in manufacturing is the use of intelligent machines in factories

so that manufacturing processes can be carried out with minimal human intervention.
It involves the application of various control systems to enable operating equipment to
carry out on their own, with little human intervention, tasks that require speed,
endurance and precision.

Industrial automation can be achieved by several different means, including

mechanical, electrical, electronic, hydraulic, pneumatic, and computers. Usually, two
or more of these means are used in combination. Todays state-of-the-art factories,
ships, and airplanes combine all of these techniques.

The main benefits of manufacturing automation include leaner operation processes

that require less energy, less material, and reduced labor waste. These can lead to
improvements in quality, accuracy, and precision. The downsides include high costs
of R&D and installation of equipment.
What is the Current State of Industrial Automation in Manufacturing?

Although lights-out manufacturing, a concept in which the lights can be switched off
leaving everything to the robots, is still a dream, remarkable progress has been made
since the 1980s. Many repetitive and high precision work in large factories, such as in
car assembly lines, have been taken over by industrial robots.

Todays industrial robots have high computing capabilities, vastly improved vision
systems, and increasing operational degrees of freedom. However, they are limited to
operating in highly structured environments and, to a large extent, still need to be
controlled by humans. They are also too specialized and inflexible for the use of small
and medium industries. Therefore, they can essentially be considered tools of long
production runs and large manufacturers.

With the rapid development and proliferation of microcomputer and software

technologies, automation in manufacturing is almost totally dependent on the
capabilities of computers and software to automate, optimize and integrate the
various components of the manufacturing system. Due to this dependence,
automation in manufacturing is called computer integrated manufacturing.

What is the Future of Industrial Automation?

Although industrial automation in manufacturing in not without its detractors (such as

an unsubstantiated claim that it will lead to mass unemployment), its future looks very
bright. Industrial robots of the future will be multi-functional so that the same machine
can be put to several different uses. They will have many capabilities associated with
human workers, such as the ability to make decisions and to work autonomously.
They will also have self-diagnostic and predictive maintenance capabilities.

Thanks to industrial automation of manufacturing, the factory of the future will be

more efficient in the utilization of energy, raw material and human resources. Also,
contrary to popular belief, the experience so far has shown that automation will not
cause mass unemployment. On the contrary, the mass use of robots will create more
jobs. Humans and robots will work together to create a more efficient and productive
workspace.