Introduction to Industrial Automation

Figure 1.8  Example of an automation system.

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Industrial Automation 

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1.3   Purpose of Industrial Automation

The industrial era was initiated by the efforts to automate existing industrial setups as a way to 

improve the quality of the produced products and the overall production volumes. Contrary to 

what is generally understood, industrial automation is not a discovery of the recent past, but it 

is rather as old as industry itself. From the beginning, the designer of an industrial production 

system has attempted to achieve an operation as autonomous as possible, always based on the 

available instrumental tools. The initial industrial production processes have based their operation 

on the workers’ eyes, hands, and brain, as alternatives to contemporary sensors, actuators, and 

computational units. All of the current automated operations of industrial processes are based 

on these three factors. Through the sensors, the necessary signals and measurements are being 

gathered from the controlled process, as presented in Figure 1.9. Subsequently, this information 

is being analyzed by the control logic, running in a computational unit and, in the final step, the 

control actions are interacting with the controlled process, through proper control of the provided 

actuators.

In the beginning, efforts to automate industrial processes were focused on the replacement 

of human labor by independent machines, each one being able to accomplish a specific task 

and in a limited surrounding space, under the premise that you feed the machine with the raw 

material, and as an output you are receiving the complete product. The automatic operation of 

those machines were initially independent of each other, and thus there was a constant need for a 

human-centric coordination of these machines. Subsequently, through the evolution of multiple, 

related technologies and through the developments in the field of analog and discrete control in 

the era of microprocessors and PLCs, a transition took place from having small-scale, centralized, 

industrial automation, to a decentralized and large-scale one, fully controlled by numerous dis-

tributed PLCs, able to synchronize multiple industrial processes. The decentralization of industrial 

automation took place through the introduction of industrial networks, which are discussed in 

Chapter 8.

Actuators

Process

Sensors

Power

Control system

Programs of

instructions

Computer

PLC