Automation

Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies reducing the need for human intervention.^[1] In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience.

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.^[2]

Advantages and disadvantages

The main advantages of automation are:

Replacing human operators in tasks that involve hard physical or monotonous work^[3].
Replacing humans in tasks that should be done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, underwater, 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.

The main disadvantages of automation are:

Technology limits. Current technology is unable 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.

Concerns about unemployment

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.

Fear of unemployment due to automation is generally dismissed as an instance of the Luddite fallacy. However, recent authors such as Martin Ford^[4] and Jeremy Rifkin^[5] suggest that exponentially accelerating information technology may ultimately result in widespread structural unemployment.

Dependence on social factors

It is commonly thought that automation implies unemployment because 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.

During the industrial revolution

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^[6] — 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.

During the information revolution

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 labor 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 labor" is in higher demand in many first-world nations, because fewer people are available to fill such jobs.

Late 20th century emphasis

In manufacturing, the purpose of automation has shifted to issues broader than productivity and costs.

Reliability and precision

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.

Health and 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. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the manufacturing of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metal working, were always early contenders for automation.

Convertibility and turn-around time

Another major shift in automation is the increased demand for flexibility and convertibility in manufacturing processes. 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.

Digital electronics helped too. Former analogue-based instrumentation was replaced by digital equivalents which can be more accurate and flexible, and offer greater scope for more sophisticated configuration, parametrization and operation. This was accompanied by the fieldbus revolution which provided a networked (i.e. a single cable) means of communicating between control systems and field level instrumentation, eliminating hard-wiring.

Discrete manufacturing plants adopted these technologies fast. The more conservative process industries with their longer plant life cycles have been slower to adopt and analogue-based measurement and control still dominates. The growing use of Industrial Ethernet on the factory floor is pushing these trends still further, enabling manufacturing plants to be integrated more tightly within the enterprise, via the internet if necessary. Global competition has also increased demand for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems.

Automation tools

Engineers now can have numerical control over automated devices. The result has been a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities. Computer-aided technologies (or CAx) now serve the basis for mathematical and organizational tools used to create complex systems. Notable examples of CAx include Computer-aided design (CAD software) and Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM software). The improved design, analysis, and manufacture of products enabled by CAx has been beneficial for industry.^[7]

Information technology, together with industrial machinery and processes, can assist in the design, implementation, and monitoring of control systems. One example of an industrial control system is a programmable logic controller (PLC). PLCs are specialized hardened computers which are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events.^[1]

Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers. Service personnel who monitor and control through HMIs can be called by different names. In industrial process and manufacturing environments, they are called operators or something similar. In boiler houses and central utilities departments they are called stationary engineers.^[8]

Different types of automation tools exist:

ANN - Artificial neural network
DCS - Distributed Control System
HMI - Human Machine Interface
SCADA - Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
PLC - Programmable Logic Controller
PAC - Programmable automation controller
Instrumentation
Motion control
Robotics

Current limits

Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible.

Applications of Automation

Automated Video surveillance:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) started the research and development of automated Visual surveillance and Monitoring (VSAM) program 1997-99 and airborne Video Surveillance (AVS) program 1998-2002. Currently there is a major effort underway in the vision community to develop a fully automated tracking surveillance system. Automated video surveillance monitors people and vehicle in real time within a busy environment. Existing automated surveillance systems are based on the environment they are primarily designed to observe, i.e., indoor, outdoor or airborne, the amount of sensors that the automated system can handle and the mobility of sensor, i.e., stationary camera vs. mobile camera. The purpose of a surveillance system is to record properties and trajectories of objects in a given area, generate warnings or notify designated authority in case of occurrence of particular events.^[9]

Automated Highway Systems:

As demands for safety and mobility have grown and technological possibilities have multiplied, interest in automation have grown. Seeking to accelerate the development and introduction of fully automated vehicles and highways, The United States Congress authorized more than $650 million over 6 years for intelligent transport systems (ITS) and demonstration projects in the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). Congress legislated in ISTEA that “The secretary [of transportation] shall develop an automated highway and vehicle prototype from which future fully automated intelligent vehicle-highway systems can be developed. Such development shall include research in human factors to ensure the success of the man-machine relationship. The goal of this program is to have the first fully automated highway roadway or an automated test track in operation by 1997. This system shall accommodate installation of equipment in new and existing motor vehicles." [ISTEA 1991, part B, Section 6054(b)].

Full automation commonly defined as requiring no control or very limited control by the driver; such automation would be accomplished through a combination of sensor, computer, and communications systems in vehicles and along the roadway. Fully automated driving would, in theory, allow closer vehicle spacing and higher speeds, which could enhance traffic capacity in places where additional road building is physically impossible, politically unacceptable, or prohibitively expensive. Automated controls also might enhance road safety by reducing the opportunity for driver error, which causes a large share of motor vehicle crashes. Other potential benefits include improved air quality (as a result of more-efficient traffic flows), increased fuel economy, and spin-off technologies generated during research and development related to automated highway systems.^[10]

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 has its influence in the manufacture processes.

The main advantage of the automated manufacturing are: higher consistency and quality, reduce the lead times, simplification of production, reduce handling, improve work flow and increase the morale of workers when a good implementation of the automation is made.

Home Automation

Home automation (also called domotics) designates an emerging practice of increased automation of household appliances and features in residential dwellings, particularly through electronic means that allow for things impracticable, overly expensive or simply not possible in recent past decades.

References

^ ^a ^b "Automation - Definitions from Dictionary.com". dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2008-04-22.
^ "30 Of The Fastest Declining Occupations". The Boston Globe. 2008-03-24.
^ Process automation, retrieved on 20.02.2010
^ Ford 2009.
^ Rifkin 1995.
^ The Luddites
^ "Engineers' CAx education—it's not only CAD".
^ Stationary Engineers and Boiler Operators
^ Javed, O, & Shah, M. (2008). Automated multi-camera surveillance. City of Publication: Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
^ Menzies, Thomas. R. National Automated Highway System Research Program A review. 253. Washington D.C.: Transportation Research Board, 1998. 2-50.

Bibliography

Ford, Martin (2009), The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future, CreateSpace, ISBN 978-1448659814.
Rifkin, Jeremy (1995), The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, New York: Tarcher–G.P. Putnam's Sons, ISBN 978-0874777796.

External links

[Reference.com-1] "Automation - Definitions from Dictionary.com". dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2008-04-22.

[2] "30 Of The Fastest Declining Occupations". The Boston Globe. 2008-03-24.

[3] Process automation, retrieved on 20.02.2010

[Ford2009-4] Ford 2009.

[Rifkin1995-5] Rifkin 1995.

[6] The Luddites

[7] "Engineers' CAx education—it's not only CAD".

[8] Stationary Engineers and Boiler Operators

[9] Javed, O, & Shah, M. (2008). Automated multi-camera surveillance. City of Publication: Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

[10] Menzies, Thomas. R. National Automated Highway System Research Program A review. 253. Washington D.C.: Transportation Research Board, 1998. 2-50.

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