A very nice presentation for Process Automation

1.
Process aut
tomation
Automation is the use of control systems (suc as numeric control, programmable logic contro and
ch cal e ol,
other industrial contro systems), in concert with other applications of in
ol nformation te
echnology (su as
uch
computer r-aided technnologies (CA
AD, CAM, C CAE), to con ntrol industr machiner and processes,
rial ry
reducing t need for human interv
the vention.
In the sco of industrialization, a
ope automation is a step beyo mechaniz
s ond zation. Wherreas mechaniz
zation
provided human oper rators with m
machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of w
o work,
automation greatly reduces the nee for human sensory and mental requir
n ed rements as w Processe and
well. es
systems c also be au
can utomated.
Automatio plays an increasingly important role in the global econo
on omy and in daily experience.
Engineers strive to co
s ombine autom mated device with mathe
es ematical and organization tools to c
nal create
complex ssystems for a rapidly expanding range o applications and human activities.
of
Many role for human in industria processes presently lie beyond the scope of aut
es ns al tomation. Hu
uman-
level patt tion, language recognition and langua productio ability are well beyond the
tern recognit e n, age on e
capabilitie of modern mechanical and compu
es n uter systems. Tasks requiring subjecti assessment or
ive
synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scent and sounds as well as h
s ts s, high-level task such as strategic
ks
planning, currently reqquire human expertise. In many cases the use of humans is m
n s, more cost-effeective
than mech hanical appro
oaches even wwhere automaation of indus
strial tasks is p
possible.
Specialized hardened computers, r
c referred to as programma
s able logic con
ntrollers (PLC are frequ
Cs), uently
used to synchronize the flow of innputs from (p physical) sensors and even with the f
nts flow of outpu to
uts
actuators and events. This leads to precisely con
T ntrolled actio that perm a tight con
ons mit ntrol of almos any
st
industrial process.
Human-m machine inte erfaces (HM or comp
MI) puter human interfaces (CHI), for
n rmerly know as
wn
man-mac chine interface are usually employed to commu
es, d unicate with PLCs and oother compu uters,
such as eentering and monitoring temperatu
d g ures or pres
ssures for fu
urther autom
mated contr or
rol
emergency response Service pe
e. ersonnel wh monitor and contro these inte
ho ol erfaces are often
referred to as stationnary enginee
ers.

2. Impact
Automation has had a notable impact in a wide range of highly visible industries beyond
manufacturing. Once-ubiquitous telephone operators have been replaced largely by automated
telephone switchboards and answering machines. Medical processes such as primary screening
in electrocardiography or radiography and laboratory analysis of human genes, sera, cells, and
tissues are carried out at much greater speed and accuracy by automated systems. Automated
teller machines have reduced the need for bank visits to obtain cash and carry out transactions.
In general, automation has been responsible for the shift in the world economy from agrarian to
industrial in the 19th century and from industrial to services in the 20th century.
The widespread impact of industrial automation raises social issues, among them its impact on
employment. Historical concerns about the effects of automation date back to the beginning of
the industrial revolution, when a social movement of English textile machine operators in the
early 1800s known as the Luddites protested against Jacquard's automated weaving looms often
by destroying such textile machines— that they felt threatened their jobs. One author made
the following case. When automation was first introduced, it caused widespread fear. It was
thought that the displacement of human operators by computerized systems would lead to
severe unemployment.
Critics of automation contend that increased industrial automation causes increased
unemployment; this was a pressing concern during the 1980s. One argument claims that this
has happened invisibly in recent years, as the fact that many manufacturing jobs left the United
States during the early 1990s was offset by a one-time massive increase in IT jobs at the same
time. Some authors argue that the opposite has often been true, and that automation has led to
higher employment. Under this point of view, the freeing up of the labour force has allowed
more people to enter higher skilled managerial as well as specialized consultant/contractor jobs
(like cryptographers), which are typically higher paying. One odd side effect of this shift is that
"unskilled labour" is in higher demand in many first-world nations, because fewer people are
available to fill such jobs.
At first glance, automation might appear to devalue labor through its replacement with less-
expensive machines; however, the overall effect of this on the workforce as a whole remains
unclear. Today automation of the workforce is quite advanced, and continues to advance
increasingly more rapidly throughout the world and is encroaching on ever more skilled jobs,
yet during the same period the general well-being and quality of life of most people in the world
(where political factors have not muddied the picture) have improved dramatically. What role
automation has played in these changes has not been well studied.

3. Late 20th century emphasis
Currently, for manufacturing companies, the purpose of automation has shifted from increasing
productivity and reducing costs, to broader issues, such as increasing quality and flexibility in
the manufacturing process.
The old focus on using automation simply to increase productivity and reduce costs was seen
to be short-sighted, because it is also necessary to provide a skilled workforce who can make
repairs and manage the machinery. Moreover, the initial costs of automation were high and
often could not be recovered by the time entirely new manufacturing processes replaced the
old. (Japan's "robot junkyards" were once world famous in the manufacturing industry.)
Automation is now often applied primarily to increase quality in the manufacturing process,
where automation can increase quality substantially. For example, automobile and truck pistons
used to be installed into engines manually. This is rapidly being transitioned to automated
machine installation, because the error rate for manual installment was around 1-1.5%, but has
been reduced to 0.00001% with automation. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the
manufacturing of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metalworking, were always early
contenders for automation.
Another major shift in automation is the increased emphasis on flexibility and convertibility in
the manufacturing process. Manufacturers are increasingly demanding the ability to easily switch
from manufacturing Product A to manufacturing Product B without having to completely
rebuild the production lines. Flexibility and distributed processes have led to the introduction
of Automated Guided Vehicles with Natural Features Navigation.
Advantages and disadvantages
The main advantages of automation are:
• Replacing human operators in tedious tasks.
• Replacing humans in tasks that should be done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire,
space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, under the water, etc)
• Making tasks that are beyond the human capabilities such as handling too heavy loads,
too large objects, too hot or too cold substances or the requirement to make things
too fast or too slow.
• Economy improvement. Sometimes and some kinds of automation implies improves in
economy of enterprises, society or most of humankind. For example, when an
enterprise that has invested in automation technology recovers its investment; when a
state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the
20th Century or when the humankind can use the internet which in turn use satellites
and other automated engines.

4. The main disadvantages of automation are:
• Technology limits. Nowadays technology is not able to automate all the desired tasks.
• Unpredictable development costs. The research and development cost of automating a
process is difficult to predict accurately beforehand. Since this cost can have a large
impact on profitability, it's possible to finish automating a process only to discover that
there's no economic advantage in doing so.
• Initial costs are relatively high. The automation of a new product required a huge initial
investment in comparison with the unit cost of the product, although the cost of
automation is spread in many product batches. The automation of a plant required a
great initial investment too, although this cost is spread in the products to be produced.
Controversial factors
• Unemployment
It is commonly thought that automation implies unemployment due to the fact that the
work of a human being is replaced in part or completely by a machine. Nevertheless, the
unemployment is caused by the economical politics of the administration like dismissing
the workers instead of changing their tasks. Since the general economical policies of
most of the industrial plants are to dismiss people, nowadays automation implies
unemployment. In different scenarios without workers, automation implies more free
time instead of unemployment like the case with the automatic washing machine at
home. Automation does not imply unemployment when it makes tasks unimaginable
without automation such as exploring mars with the Sojourner or when the economy is
fully adapted to an automated technology as with the Telephone switchboard.
• Environment
The costs of automation to the environment are different depending on the technology,
product or engine automated. There are automated engines that consume more energy
resources from the Earth in comparison with previous engines and those that do the
opposite too.
• Human being replacement
In the future there is a possibility that the Artificial intelligence could replace and
improve a human brain and the robots would become not only fully automated but fully
autonomous from the human beings (Technological singularity)

5. Automated manufacturing
Automated manufacturing refers to the application of automation to produce things in the
factory way. Most of the advantages of the automation technology have its influence in the
manufacture processes.
The main advantages of the automated manufacturing are:
Higher consistency and quality, reduce the lead times, simplification of production, reduce
handling, improve work flow and increase the moral of workers when a good implementation
of the automation is made.
Group Technology
Group Technology or GT is a manufacturing philosophy in which the parts having similarities
(Geometry, manufacturing process and/or function) are grouped together to achieve higher
level of integration between the design and manufacturing functions of a firm.
The aim is to reduce work-in-progress and improve delivery performance by reducing lead
times. GT is based on a general principle that many problems are similar and by grouping similar
problems, a single solution can be found to a set of problems, thus saving time and effort.
The group of similar parts is known as part family and the group of machineries used to
process an individual part family is known as machine cell. It is not necessary for each part of
a part family to be processed by every machine of corresponding machine cell. This type of
manufacturing in which a part family is produced by a machine cell is known as cellular
manufacturing. The manufacturing efficiencies are generally increased by employing GT
because the required operations may be confined to only a small cell and thus avoiding the need
for transportation of in-process parts
Example:
Pump
Motor 1HP, 2HP, 3HP etc
Housing Material, Size
Shafts Material, Capacity, Dimensions
Seals Material, Type, Size
Flanges Material, Type, Size

6. Part 1 Part 2
10 parts per month 10,000 parts per m
0 month
1020 AIS Steel
SI Polyestter
Toleranc < 0.01mm
ce m Toleraance < 0.1mm
m
Coding of the parts:
g p
Design a
attributes
1. Extern Internal Shape and d
nal/ dimensions
2. Aspec Ratio
ct
3. Dimen nsional Tole
erance
4. Surfac Finish
ce
5. Part fu
unction
Manufac
cturing Att
tributes
1. Primary Processes
2. econdary an finishing p
Se nd processes/surface finish
3. Se
equence of operations p
o performed
4. Tools, Dies, Fixtures etc
T F
5. Production quantity and Production rate

7. Coding Example:
Shape Axial
Flat
Bend Straight Single bend Periphery Rectangular
Irregular
Corners Square
Beveled
Machined Curved Radiused
Multiple Holes With
bend Without
Bends 900
<900
>900
Advantages of Group Technology:
1. Standardization of part designs and minimization of design duplication
cost and time
2. Designer can used stored data of some previous design
3. Manufacturing cost can be estimated easily
4. Improved productivity

8. Flexible manufacturing system (FMS)
A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a manufacturing system in which there is some
amount of flexibility that allows the system to react in the case of changes, whether predicted
or unpredicted. This flexibility is generally considered to fall into two categories, which both
contain numerous subcategories.
The first category, machine flexibility, covers the system's ability to be changed to produce new
product types, and ability to change the order of operations executed on a part. The second
category is called routing flexibility, which consists of the ability to use multiple machines to
perform the same operation on a part, as well as the system's ability to absorb large-scale
changes, such as in volume, capacity, or capability.
Most FMS systems comprise of three main systems. The work machines which are often
automated CNC machines are connected by a material handling system to optimize parts flow
and the central control computer which controls material movements and machine flow.
The main advantage of the FMS is its high flexibility in managing manufacturing resources like
time and effort in order to manufacture a new product. The best application of an FMS is found
in the production of small sets of products like those from a mass production.
Industrial FMS Communication
An Industrial Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) consists of robots, Computer-
controlled Machines, Numerical controlled machines (CNC), instrumentation devices,
computers, sensors, and other stand alone systems such as inspection machines. The use of
robots in the production segment of manufacturing industries promises a variety of benefits
ranging from high utilization to high volume of productivity. Each Robotic cell or node will be
located along a material handling system such as a conveyor or automatic guided vehicle. The
production of each part or work-piece will require a different combination of manufacturing
nodes. The movement of parts from one node to another is done through the material handling
system. At the end of part processing, the finished parts will be routed to an automatic
inspection node, and subsequently unloaded from the Flexible Manufacturing System.
The FMS data traffic consists of large files and short messages, and mostly come from nodes,
devices and instruments. The message size ranges between a few bytes to several hundreds of
bytes. Executive software and other data, for example, are files with a large size, while messages
for machining data, instrument to instrument communications, status monitoring, and data
reporting are transmitted in small size.

9. There is also some variation on response time. Large program files from a main computer
usually take about 60 seconds to be down loaded into each instrument or node at the beginning
of FMS operation. Messages for instrument data need to be sent in a periodic time with
deterministic time delay. Other type of messages used for emergency reporting is quite short in
size and must be transmitted and received with almost instantaneous response.
The demands for reliable FMS protocol that support all the FMS data characteristics are
now urgent. The existing IEEE standard protocols do not fully satisfy the real time
communication requirements in this environment. The delay of CSMA/CD is unbounded as the
number of nodes increases due to the message collisions. Token Bus has a deterministic
message delay, but it does not support prioritized access scheme which is needed in FMS
communications. Token Ring provides prioritized access and has a low message delay; however,
its data transmission is unreliable. A single node failure which may occur quite often in FMS
causes transmission errors of passing message in that node. In addition, the topology of Token
Ring results in high wiring installation and cost.
A design of FMS communication protocol that supports a real time communication with
bounded message delay and reacts promptly to any emergency signal is needed. Because of
machine failure and malfunction due to heat, dust, and electromagnetic interference is common,
a prioritized mechanism and immediate transmission of emergency messages are needed so that
a suitable recovery procedure can be applied. A modification of standard Token Bus to
implement a prioritized access scheme was proposed to allow transmission of short and
periodic messages with a low delay compared to the one for long messages.

10. Integrated System
Manufacturing FMS
Highly Automated Systems
Elements
CNCs/Industrial Robots
Automated Material Handling
CONTROL SYSTEM
CENTRAL COMPUTER FACILITY
(FMS Block Diagram)
Characteristics Transfer line FMS
Type of part made Generally few Infinite
Lot Size >100 1-50
Part Changing Time ½ to 8 Hrs 1 min
Tool Change Manual Automatic
Inventory High Low
Efficiency 60-70% 85%

11. ROBOTS