Industrial automation is the use of control systems for operating equipment such as machinery, plants processes, packaging lines,… with minimal or reduced human intervention. Some processes have been completely automated.
To make industrial automation feasible you need PLC’s (hard or soft). PLC’s are capable to interact at different situations. Depending on the input signals and the program in the plc’s, they adapt their output signals and therefore also the process.
Industrial automation can be divided in different layers. From ‘shopfloor’ till ‘topfloor’. A brief overview can be seen in the layer model: