Quality of Service (QoS) of Automation

Abstract

Quality of service (QoS) of automation involves issues of cost, affordability, energy, maintenance, and dependability. This chapter focuses on cost, affordability, and energy. (The next chapter addresses the other aspects.) Cost-effective or cost-oriented automation is part of a strategy called low-cost automation. It considers the life cycle of an automation system with respect to their owners: design, production, operating, and maintenance, refitting or recycling. Affordable automation is another part of the strategy. It considers automation or automatic control in small enterprises to enhance their competitiveness in manufacturing and service. Despite relative expensive components the automation system can be cheap with respect to operation and maintenance. As examples are discussed: numerical controls of machine tools; shop floor control with distributed information processing; programmable logic controllers (PLCs) shifting to general-purpose (PC); smart devices, i.e. information processing integrated in sensors and actuators; and distributed manufacturing, and maintenance. Energy saving can be supported by automatic control of consumption in households, office buildings, plants, and transport. Energy intensity is decreasing in most developing countries, caused by changing habits of people and by new control strategies. Centralized generation of electrical energy has advantages in terms of economies of scale, but also wastes energy. Decentralized generation of electricity and heat in regional or local units are of advantage. A combination of wind energy, solar energy, hydropower, energy from biomass, and fossil fuel in small units could provide electrical energy and heat in regions isolated from grids. These hybrid energy concepts are demanding advanced, but low-cost, controls.