Equipment automation is characterized by the ability for an application or system within the production environment to control the actions of the manufacturing equipment.
Basic equipment integration describes a level of automation where the data acquired through integrated equipment is one-directional. Data is simply retrieved from the equipment by another system that facilitates the execution of production processes, perhaps a manufacturing execution system (MES). This enables automated data collection and cycle counts, provides information to the MES or another similar system regarding equipment status, and provides increased traceability.
Equipment automation is characterized by the ability for an application or system within the production environment to control the actions of the manufacturing equipment.
Typical functions associated with equipment automation are:
- Validation of all prerequisites for a production process, including, all equipment and information from other integrated systems
- Run the right recipe and set the correct parameters for the production process to run
- Automatically start the equipment after all prerequisites are fulfilled
- Stop processes if errors occur
