While many automation companies provide products that control individual parts of the manufacturing process, and a few have stitched many such products into systems that span the entire process, only Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) goes from shop floor to top floor with a completely harmonized homogeneous architecture. Instead of just piecing together system components from the outside in by building bridges between existing automation islands as most integrated control systems claim, TIA is designed from the inside out beginning with core intelligence built into modules at the machine-automation level, and carried consistently through the plant-wide automation system to achieve complete, seamless integration.

TIA doesn’t just link together parts of a manufacturing process, it goes further by linking together automation components inside each machine module, such as by providing a transparent link from the I/O device, to the I/O card, to the device network, to the Controllers, to the HMI. By carrying such standards consistently out to the highest automation levels, TIA doesn’t just link islands of automation, it eliminates them, making the resulting automation a homogeneous system engineered in a single software environment instead of a patchwork of hardware and software packages.

Improving business performance with an Integrated Control System

Integrated control systems can help any manufacturing operation improve its business performance, whether it is discrete automation like assembling automobiles, or a continuous process like refining oil. Many benefits accrue from integrating a company’s islands of automation, the most important are:
•    Improved production transparency
•    Reduced downtime
•    Reduced process integration costs
•    Lowered total cost of ownership (TCO)

Improved Production Transparency is critical for controlling costs and maintaining peak process performance. When management’s view of process activity becomes murky, the ability to determine causes of performance issue drops off. Processes begin to drift, while output, quality and efficiency erode. And, nobody knows why. Integrated control systems that help managers see clearly into production-process activity are critical to maintaining world-class operations.

Reduced Downtime comes from timely maintenance of automation equipment and being able to quickly recognize and respond to issues as they happen. Overloaded, aging, and under-maintained equipment breaks down more often, and takes longer and costs more to fix if not protected by state-of-the-art predictive maintenance programs based on integrated system and process diagnostics. Such programs are ineffective, however, without rapid and thorough condition monitoring made possible through integrated control systems.

Reduced Process Integration Costs go straight to a company’s bottom line. To maintain their competitive edge, world-class manufacturing companies constantly update and upgrade their production equipment. Integrated automation reduces these upgrade costs by speeding up and simplifying the effort needed to bring replacement equipment online. Not only does speeding up the integration of replacement hardware and software provide direct cost savings, more importantly it cuts the indirect opportunity cost of lost production time. The same integration-cost advantages are available when rearranging or revamping production process flows, even if the same equipment and systems are employed.

Lowered Total Cost of Ownership is the goal of every smart management team. They know that original equipment purchase prices, and even installation expenses, are a fraction of the cost structure for any production system. While capital costs spike at the start of every installation project, expenses to operate and maintain production equipment over decades of operational life often dwarf these capital costs. The positive effects of integrated control systems improve production costs throughout the equipment’s useful life—even minimizing decommissioning and replacement costs at the back end. In fact, since integrated automation is really a factory-wide system; it improves TCO of the entire factory.

From island to integrated

If these business drivers described above are important to you, an integrated control system will help you achieve them. After you identify the need for an integrated control system, the difficult next step is to choose the right one. Many automation suppliers claim their solution for an integrated control systems tie together islands of automation into a complete automated production system. The difference is in the approach.

Most integrated control systems are the result of an outside-in development process. Historically, industrial automation technology is the convergence of development efforts by numerous computer-control technology programs scattered through a broad spectrum of automation-technology companies. Various experts designed technology to automate different parts of the industrial-production environment.

Most vendors’ integrated control systems offerings have been assembled using this outside-in process. Vendors assembled systems by acquiring components developed by different R&D departments internally or externally developed by other companies through licensing, acquisition, or marketing agreements, and combining them ...