Origin and development of automation
Although automation pervades our everyday life
, the term "automation" is pretty recent, as it was used for the first time after World War II. The term referred to the fact that some industries, notably the car industry, began to use advanced automatic and control devices in the production lines. In particular, the term "automation" is thought to have been coined by D.S. Harder, manager of the Ford Motor Company. However, although the word automation was used for the first time only about the middle of the 20th century, we can speak about automation and industrial automation, i.e. the application of automatic machinery to industrial production, even in the 18th century, with the Industrial Revolution.The term automation refers to the replacement of human work with machinery in self-governing systems, where this replacement is made to avoid too heavy or repetitive works, but also to carry out those works that could not be carried out without the help of this machinery. Before the Industrial Revolution we could only speak about mechanization, in the sense that part of human work was carried out by machines. Men have always tried to lighten their workload by means of mechanical tools and devices, like pulleys and lifting systems, just to name a few, but it was only with the Industrial Revolution that in many firms workers began to make the same repetitive action an indefinite number of times, making it necessary to replace them with machines that could carry out the same job.
Industrial automation has had revolutionary consequences, which have changed the face of society and which have had a significant impact on productivity and on lifestyles. Thanks to automation, the production rate increases and at the same time the amount of labour employed decreases, with a clear impact on the increase in productivity and, consequently, on the reduction of the prices of the products produced on an industrial scale. Moreover the development and diffusion of automation have changed human work, rather than replacing it: workers are not asked to make the job that is now made by machines, but it is necessary to train new specialised employees who are able to use and control the technologies that are used in automatized industries.
With the development of electronics and information technology, automation has made further progress, and has been applied to many different fields, from services companies to medicine (robotized prostheses, medical robotics), from communication (telephone switching has been one of the first scopes of automation, and has hugely developed in time) to assembly machines, although there are still some operations that cannot be made automatically: for example in the case of card assembly and installation of electronic components, which can be used in many fields, like electronic security, production is only helped through automatic machinery. In spite of the progress in the field of automation, human work is still essential. By Martina Celegato with support
dispositivi elettronica
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Prima Posizione srl
Origin and development of automation
By: Martina