{"id":10423,"date":"2020-11-06T13:04:34","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T13:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/?p=10423"},"modified":"2024-11-13T11:36:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T11:36:21","slug":"automation-and-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/automation-and-control\/automation-and-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Automation and Control"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all might have heard of the term automation and control on a frequent basis and we can get somewhat of an idea from its name and about what automation actually is. If it is to be explained in the simplest of terms, Automation and Control engineering is all about reducing the human involvement in a production process in order to reduce or eliminate the human error and to enhance and boost ht production at the same time. We live in an era of rapidly evolving technologies and the advancements and everyday there is something new to discover in the technological world. After the third industrial revolution, the amount of research and development in the areas of computerized machinery has exploded and the industry keeps on seeking the new ways to gain increased rendements. To that end, entire production processes are being automated and being controlled with very little to no human input. In general, the utilization of the information resulting from the research in industry and other production systems has led to emerge a new branch of engineering,”Control and Automation Engineering”. Control and Automation engineering is a branch of engineering which develops and implements information and technology providing electrical, electronic, mechanical and computer-based all industrial systems to work intended and planned manner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the simplest terms, it is an\nautomated system which acts and controls the whole production process by acting\non the feedbacks from its sensing units. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

History<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The automation and control mechanisms are nothing new in the\nhuman world. Ancient Greeks and Arabs were quite adept in creating simple water\nclocks which worked with a water regulating feedback quite similar to the flush\ntank mechanisms. These clocks would be quite accurate and would be used till\nthe 14th<\/sup> century when they became obsolete with the invention of the\nmechanical clock. With the 2nd<\/sup> industrial revolution, the\nrequirements for the automation and control of the self regulating machines had\nincreased drastically which resulted in the inventions of pressure regulators,\ntemperature regulators, float regulators and speed control devices. These are\nall sensing devices whose modern day variants, transmit their day to the\ncontrol unit of the machine. The innovations resulting in more and more\nadvanced control and automation of the machinery was very slow until the dawn\nof the 20th<\/sup> century where the rapid advancements in the field of\ntechnology were made which were followed by the 1st<\/sup> and the 2nd<\/sup>\nworld war which saw massive advancements in the fields of the mass\ncommunications and signal processing. Various encoding and encryption devices\nlike the Enigma machine, developed by the German scientist during World War II,\nwere developed and decoding devices like Turing\u2019s Bombe machine, which was a\ncomputer specifically designed to crack Enigma code, were developed along the\nwar. Other key advances in automatic controls that happened during the second\nworld war include differential equations, stability theory and system theory,\nfrequency domain analysis, ship control, and stochastic analysis. Around the\nend of 1950s, Texaco’s Port Arthur Refinery became the first chemical plant to\nuse digital control. Conversion of factories to digital control began to spread\nrapidly in the 1970s as the price of computer hardware fell leading to today\u2019s\nadvancements in the form of PLCs, microcontrollers and SKADA based systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advantages over the Conventional System<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the help of PLCs, microcontrollers, SKADA and similar\nsystems, a number of advantages can be achieved over the conventional methods.\nThe first, foremost and the most obvious advantage among these is the higher\nproductions as compared to the conventional production methods. By reducing the\nmanual input in the production, the whole process become streamlined with exact\nand calculated times which free the production plants from a lot of restraining\nfactors like delayed response from the production team because of fatigue,\nerrors, mistakes and mishaps and most of all, the need for a 24 hours supervision\nand maintenance. Most of the times, the companies need to hire three shifts of\npersonnel in order to maximize their production efforts which still does\ninclude all of the human error risks but also drastically adds to the costs of\nproduction. Automation removes all of these factors which not only improves the\nproduction but also reduces the operational costs of the machinery. It also\nresults in the higher quality of the product because unlike humans, machines do\nare not fatigued ever so the chances of any kind of mistake are completely\neliminated. Higher flexibility is another one of these advantages since the\nrobots can be programmed to do any kind of task while in the conventional\nsystem, a new trained worker would be required to handle that task. Better and\nmore accurate data collectivity as a result of automation, allows you to\ncollect accurate information about the whole process and you can reduce the\nwaste and further improve the production by making the right decisions with the\naccurate information. Most important of all the advantages is the improved\nsafety of the staff since the machines handle the most hazardous tasks\nminimizing the risks of accident and injuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scale of Automation in Pakistan<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although a lot of industries try to keep their technology\nupdated to enhance their production, most of the industry in Pakistan is still\nusing the conventional production methods and do not try to improve their\ntechnology. This is usually happens because of the high initial costs of\nautomating the entire production process but once it had been done, the\nadvantages and benefits completely overshadow the initial installation costs.\nMost of all, it saves on the production costs in the long term and easily cover\nup its initial installation costs. The foresight to see such advantages is the\nmost lacking factor in the industrial leadership in Pakistan at the moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can be done to improve the situation<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awareness campaigns need to be launched to make the industry\nowners realize the huge benefits of switching to an automated and controlled\nproduction system from the conventional methods. Pakistan already is making\nstrides in the automation and control sector and full advantage of these\ndevelopments need to be taken in order to maximize the production efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction We all might have heard of the term automation and control on a frequent basis and we can get somewhat of an idea from its name and about what automation actually is. If it is to be explained in the simplest of terms, Automation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11045,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-automation-and-control"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17388,"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10423\/revisions\/17388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amsiot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}