Motivation and Scope
The Industrial Electronics Society has a proud record of being one of the first IEEE Societies to report on industrial automation applications of microprocessor technology in the early 1980s. Since then, the evolution of semiconductor technology, accelerated by rapid advances in design, testing, and fabrication, coupled with major advances in software engineering, has been built on solid scientific foundations and has been one of the decisive factors in transforming industrial automated systems and plants into distributed, autonomous, integrated enterprises.
The controllers used with field devices such as sensors and actuators typically provide on-chip signal conversion, data and signal processing, and communication functions. The increased functionality, processing, and communication capabilities of controllers have been largely instrumental in the emergence of a widespread trend toward networking field devices over specialized networks, frequently referred to as field area networks. In general, the benefits of using specialized networks are numerous, including increased flexibility from the combination of embedded hardware and software, improved system performance, and ease of installation, upgrade, and maintenance.
Although wireline-based field-area networks are dominant, wireless technology offers a range of advantages across a number of application areas. In industrial automation, for instance, wireless device (sensor/actuator) networks can support mobile operations required for mobile robots, monitoring and control of equipment in hazardous and difficult-to-access environments, etc.
Ethernet, the backbone technology for office networks, is increasingly being adopted for communication in factories and plants at the fieldbus level. The random and native CSMA/CD arbitration mechanism is being replaced by other solutions that provide deterministic behavior required for real-time communication to support soft and hard real-time deadlines, time-synchronization of activities required to control drives, for instance, and the exchange of small data records characteristic of monitoring and control actions. The direct support for the Internet technologies allows for vertical integration of various levels of industrial enterprise hierarchy to include seamless integration between automation and business logistic levels to exchange jobs and production (process) data; transparent data interfaces for all stages of the plant life cycle; the Internet- and web-enabled remote diagnostics and maintenance, as well as electronic orders and transactions.
With the growing trend for networking of industrial automated system and their Internetworking with LAN, WAN, and the Internet (for instance, there is a growing demand for remote access to process data at the factory floor - assisted by embedded web servers), many of those systems may become exposed to potential security attacks, which may compromise their integrity and cause damage as a result.
The automation is not confined to factory or plant processes but also involves industrial building complexes, their electrical and power systems, vehicles, etc.
This is a small sample of trends in industrial and factory automation and, in this context, an outline, although limited, of the scope of the Technical Committee on Factory Automation, which has been an integral part of IES activities since the 1980s.
This Committee was established by decision of the IES AdCom at its March 9, 2005, meeting in Atlanta. For more information on the Committee activities, announcements of new initiatives, and background reading material on the various facets of industrial and factory automation and technologies, please visit our pages.
The controllers used with field devices such as sensors and actuators typically provide on-chip signal conversion, data and signal processing, and communication functions. The increased functionality, processing, and communication capabilities of controllers have been largely instrumental in the emergence of a widespread trend toward networking field devices over specialized networks, frequently referred to as field area networks. In general, the benefits of using specialized networks are numerous, including increased flexibility from the combination of embedded hardware and software, improved system performance, and ease of installation, upgrade, and maintenance.
Although wireline-based field-area networks are dominant, wireless technology offers a range of advantages across a number of application areas. In industrial automation, for instance, wireless device (sensor/actuator) networks can support mobile operations required for mobile robots, monitoring and control of equipment in hazardous and difficult-to-access environments, etc.
Ethernet, the backbone technology for office networks, is increasingly being adopted for communication in factories and plants at the fieldbus level. The random and native CSMA/CD arbitration mechanism is being replaced by other solutions that provide deterministic behavior required for real-time communication to support soft and hard real-time deadlines, time-synchronization of activities required to control drives, for instance, and the exchange of small data records characteristic of monitoring and control actions. The direct support for the Internet technologies allows for vertical integration of various levels of industrial enterprise hierarchy to include seamless integration between automation and business logistic levels to exchange jobs and production (process) data; transparent data interfaces for all stages of the plant life cycle; the Internet- and web-enabled remote diagnostics and maintenance, as well as electronic orders and transactions.
With the growing trend for networking of industrial automated system and their Internetworking with LAN, WAN, and the Internet (for instance, there is a growing demand for remote access to process data at the factory floor - assisted by embedded web servers), many of those systems may become exposed to potential security attacks, which may compromise their integrity and cause damage as a result.
The automation is not confined to factory or plant processes but also involves industrial building complexes, their electrical and power systems, vehicles, etc.
This is a small sample of trends in industrial and factory automation and, in this context, an outline, although limited, of the scope of the Technical Committee on Factory Automation, which has been an integral part of IES activities since the 1980s.
This Committee was established by decision of the IES AdCom at its March 9, 2005, meeting in Atlanta. For more information on the Committee activities, announcements of new initiatives, and background reading material on the various facets of industrial and factory automation and technologies, please visit our pages.