subject: Take Charge of Your Manufacturing with Automation Control [print this page] Take Charge of Your Manufacturing with Automation Control
Automation is a series of processes that are performed by machines. These machines must be coordinated with one another and work in cooperation with one another to build products in a consistent fashion. In order for the coordination to occur there must be a device in place that will do the automation control. The sophistication and ability of the automation control device has improved by leaps and bounds in the last few years. It has had to improve because the pressures on manufacturing have been high to produce more high quality products at a faster and faster pace.
Not only has the pace quickened, but there has been a need for automation control to be specialized into work types like motion control or just automation control. These special types of control must work together for a positive end result. A controller that controls automation must be able to integrate the work of separate parts of the automation into one continuous stream of effort. The devices that make up a production line or work in a group as a work cell have to be able to positively respond to the commands that are given to them by the controller. This is a large step away from the manufacturing of the past where individual machines were simply dedicated to one tasks and one task alone, and there was no way that coordination could be done from one machine to another. Any tasks that are done in an automated environment should be performed under the automation control of one or more controllers that have the same language and are closely integrated.
Any motion that is done by automation has to be very fast and deterministic. Automated control is assigned the responsibility of making sure that all the devices that are coordinated by it are performing tasks in a repeatable fashion. Every movement that is required to be done is very quick and done at exactly the same pace to the same location every single time. Determinism means that the controller operates in real time, exactly the same way every time. Real time means that the function is done without deviation, every time that it is performed, in length of move, position of movement, and time of movement. Automated control delivers the consistent determinism that is required to get tasks done by automation as expected.
Automation should be delivered by a device that has the ability to allow the construction of templates, code, and libraries that can be stored on disk in libraries and used repeatedly. This will save the time of construction for these elements and speed up the implementation of new projects in manufacturing. Standards of these type of elements will eliminate rework. More focus can be given to the configuration of the actual production application when elements have been previously developed and tested.
Speed is hallmark of the controller. There will need to be tools for tuning and tracing of applications. These type of tools will be required for optimizing the automation tasks. Tuning and tracing will be able to look at the entire group of controlled processes and do accurate analysis. There may be wizards available that can guide the setting of dynamic parameters to achieve the best tuning analysis.
The network on which the automation applications are running should be one that is of an established standard. It will be much more difficult to support and maintain an off-the-wall, non-standard network. Usually the network that is used for the applications will be proprietary and limit you to one supplier. One of the most important characteristics of the network is its ability to support very high speed deterministic automation applications. On the other hand the network should not place any constraints on the operations that are required by the automation controller and the tasks that assigns to the automation devices.
Open architecture is best for the controller. This type of controller has the ability to receive memory upgrades to improve processing, while the traditional controllers do not. A controller with open architecture will allow for improved integration and the reduction of cost related to automation applications. The traditional controller that does not use open architecture will not be able to run some applications. Open architecture controllers allow custom control programs to be embedded into the automation program. Users are able to develop their own solution for automation in the open architecture. These will run effectively on the controller. If there is a need for an interface with a database it will be easy to do with open architecture. Improved performance can be gained with open architecture because interface modules can be plugged directly into the bus of the controller.
