Talk:Automation/Archive 1

Its all very interesting but it is obviously original research and personal opinion! It makes the whole article look bad. Can it be removed until someone sources it and then added back in?

I found the source for the LCA section.^[1] It's from an Indian National Productivity Council training manual with no citations, so I think it'd be safe to say that this can be deleted, as it seems to be merely opinion rather than fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.50.10.236 (talk) 04:10, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Automation. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110524000533/http://blogs.itbusiness.ca:80/2011/05/mcdonald%E2%80%99s-automation-a-sign-of-declining-service-sector-employment/ to http://blogs.itbusiness.ca/2011/05/mcdonald%E2%80%99s-automation-a-sign-of-declining-service-sector-employment/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers. —^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 23:59, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

An editor changed the word "feedback" to "on/off" in description of a thermostat, here and when i changed it back to "feedback" they reverted it. Anyway, i think an on-off (boolean or two-state) control is a special case of feedback, and that the feedback element is the relevant element here in the text. SageRad (talk) 05:18, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Here's a source describing a thermostat as feedback. Not the best source i'm sure but the first that came up in Google. SageRad (talk) 05:22, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

That is not a credible technical source related to automation. The term feedback originated in the fields of political economy and sociology, for which that source gave examples. In automation and process control, feedback control has a different meaning. Many engineers such as myself were required to take a course in control theory. For an introduction see: Section 3.1, p-31 Basic Feedback Loop: Feedback Control Theory. In a feedback control system a sensor measures a variable and feeds back a signal for comparison against a set point. The controller makes a calculation and sends a signal to adjust another system component (an actuator) which will change the measured variable in the direction of the set point. An old fashioned, simple thermostat system only turns something on or off and is referred to as "on-off" control by control engineers. For the history of control engineering the technically inclined reader is referred to:^[1].Phmoreno (talk) 12:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Your experience and knowledge does not matter here, other editor. I also have extensive experience in engineering including serious control theory and have built many devices using feedback, and have read tons about it. A thermostat of the typical sort (boolean output in relation to a set point) is a form of feedback. It's a most basic form. Here is another source. Here is another source that uses a thermostat as a basic example of feedback. Here is yet another. Note that the word "feedback" here does not need to be used in a very constrained way, but in a general and common way, and in that sense, a thermostat is a sensor that provides feedback to the control unit that controls the plant of the heating and/or cooling plant of a system. SageRad (talk) 13:04, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm glad to see that you are well versed in the subject. That makes you perfectly qualified to write a couple of sentences describing boolean feedback control with the standard depiction in the textbook control diagram. Improve, don't just change. Regards.Phmoreno (talk) 13:25, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Two findings: 1. A thermostat is a temperature regulating device; however, the historical development was a mechanical controler rather than on-off control. This was before electricity and was applied to temperature control on an oven by means of regulating air supply. 2. "In 1951 the American Institute of Electrical Engineers published a set of 'Proposed Symbols and Terms for Feedback Control Systems' which has since been widely accepted by American engineers. It offers this definition: 'A Feedback Control System is a system which tends to maintain a prescribed relationship of one system variable to another by comparing functions of these variables and using the difference as a means of control.'"^[2]Phmoreno (talk) 01:36, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

A thermostat is a feedback controller, but can be either analogue or on/off. We are talking about two non-exclusive things here.

Dougsim (talk) 09:51, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Whether or not a thermostat is a feedback controller depends on finding 2 in the previous talk section, which provides a very clear definition of what a feedback controller is. The key is qualification is "comparing one variable to another and using the difference as a means of control." The "control" should have some relationship to the difference. On-off is not proportional, integral or differential control.16:59, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Controller type is being confused here with controller action (the form of the output). The thermostat is a closed loop type. For instance, the simplest model, a bi-metallic strip, compares the ambient air temperature with the temperature set on the dial, and generates an error, which is the mechanical stress in the strip. When it reaches a certain value the strip bends and a discrete switching action occurs. The controller type is effectively a high gain proportional controller with hysteresis, but the control action (the output) is on/off.Dougsim (talk) 07:33, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, there's something wrong with the current "automatic control" page, because it has hardly any content, and trying to write it will result in a lot of duplication. I've suggested merging it into automation, but open to other page suggestions. Something has to be done with automatic control because it is a term commonly used. I think in the early days of PID controller development automatic control was understood by the few people involved in it to be continuous modulating control. In time meanings change, and the borderline between continuous modulating control and sequential and combinational control have been blurred because of the large systems that do all of them. and we should perhaps reflect that. Note that there is hardly anything to merge from automatic control, it's just a redirect. Comments? Dougsim (talk) 09:15, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

There are dozens of "control" pages around, and certainly I think now a mistake to merge with automation, so I'll give automatic control some meaningful text.Dougsim (talk) 16:25, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Automation. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130517174600/http://www.bma-automation.com/Prozessautomatisierung.2102.0.html?id=2102&L=1 to http://www.bma-automation.com/Prozessautomatisierung.2102.0.html?id=2102&L=1
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130116072459/http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/Automated-Garbage-Trucks-Hitting-Cedar-Rapids-Streets-181070351.html to http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/Automated-Garbage-Trucks-Hitting-Cedar-Rapids-Streets-181070351.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080704074027/http://www.isa.org/autobok to http://www.isa.org/autobok/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 06:36, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

I almost reverted it, and I could have cited at least 3 policies and guidelines for doing so, but perhaps it is a nice trigger to wikify it and incorporate that significant viewpoint into the article. North8000 (talk) 00:25, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

How is this article different from Automatic control, which is given as a synonym for "automation" in the lead sentence? There was some discussion at Talk:Automatic control of merging anything unique from that page to this one, but I don't the merge tags were ever applied. --Wtshymanski (talk) 22:07, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

First I think that we need to realize that these are words in the English language more so than inherently defined topics. And each has lots of different meanings. And also both are so broad and so overlapping with other articles that IMO both should be mostly about the terms. But I do think that they have different meanings with respect to being articles. IMO automation is the overall process of doing something automatically, and automatic control would for example, be the control portion of or control of that automation. Also there are cases where automatic control exists without anything that is commonly called automation. For example, a thermostat controlling the temperature in a house. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:34, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

In the third paragraph it is stated that close loop control (comparing difference of signal value and desired value and react accordingly) is the simplest form of automation. This is absolutely not true. A robot putting one piece after the other from place A to place B does not need any signal to do its job. This can be pure open-loop controlled. This needs correction. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.176.16.5 (talk) 17:01, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the main (first) part of your post, the article does not say/claim that. It was describing the "simplest type of an automatic control loop" not claiming that a control loop was the simplest form of automation.North8000 (talk) 21:29, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

WHOA!!! If this is the third industrial revolution these posters didn't learn much from the first 2. The cost of robotic production does NOT tend towards zero. The cost of implementing a new robotic system requires teams of engineers and maintenance technicians. Indeed, each new actuator or material required to develop a new system puts money in the pockets of manufacturers. An easier way to look at it is to think about the car industry. The car industry is just now approaching 100 years old, and it represents billions in revenue and thousands of jobs. Granted, thousands of Farriers, horse stables, buggy companies, and large parts of the railroad industry suffered as a result of cars, but each "threat" to established industries has only evolved into a new more efficient industry....

Automation does tend production costs downward, where costs are measured in Human Time per unit produced. Automation only reduces costs in the limited scope where it’s applied; and costs only tend asymptotically toward zero.

That cost reduction is often a driving motivation, with owners only engaging teams of engineers to automate when anticipating lower per-unit costs; but such reductions are not globally uniform. Markets remain fractured, for both political & geographic reasons — in spite of dramatic market flattening and price reductions driven by standardized networks shrinking transport costs for both materials & data. ISO containers & ships, TCP/IP & routers notwithstanding, transport is not completely “frictionless”. A cup of coffee can’t be teleported hot from a restaurant in Kona to a bedside in Siberia.LoneStarNot (talk) 13:57, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

While I do think it's important to always keep up-to-date research in wikipedia articles, I think the new article added do not fully cover the information that was in the older Deloitte one. For example:

• Document redaction, Data extraction and document synthesis / reporting, Manual activities and verifications, Follow-up and email communications.

These are not as specific as the ones mentioned in the article but these are still important cognitive automation areas. But these are not mentioned now. In my opinion atleast a sentence should be added to that section. What do you think? Korvidus (talk) 17:54, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Chrstinahuynh, C3e7.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:03, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Wiae, I would like to ask clarifications with regards to the following statement in the Sources section that was deleted:

This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from In Brief to The State of Food and Agriculture 2022 – Leveraging automation in agriculture for transforming agrifood systems, FAO, FAO. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.

Whenever I used text from this In brief (whose license has been transformed to comply to the Wikimedia one) text was copy-pasted. In all other cases, text has been rephrased.

Thanks, ~~~~

DanSD19 (talk) 10:17, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi DanSD19, if there's text that's in the "In brief" document and isn't in https://www.fao.org/3/cb9479en/cb9479en.pdf then it should be okay to include here. But the full SOFA 2022 has a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO license that prevents commercial reuse, which is incompatible with Wikipedia's license. So text can't be copy-pasted from the SOFA 2022 into our article without a rewrite.

It's possible I made a mistake and removed a sentence that had been taken only from the "In Brief". If so you should be able to go ahead and reinsert it. Thanks! /wiae /tlk 11:16, 2 February 2023 (UTC)