Piloting architectures of industrial processes

Over the past thirty years, manufacturers have been focusing on the automation of industrial processes in order to constantly improve the performance of their production facilities. Taking advantage of technological advances in communications and industrial automation (interfaces or Web services embedded in PLCs), as well as in electronics and IT (RFID, sensor networks, embedded software components, etc.), these automated systems now incorporate an ever-increasing share of information and communication technologies distributed at the very heart of production processes and products. But this automation comes at a price, in terms of the complexity of the control system, both in terms of the heterogeneous hardware elements (dedicated computers, communication networks, action and sensing chains, etc.) that make it up, and in terms of the software functions (scheduling, control, monitoring, diagnostics, reconfiguration, supervision, etc.) that it houses. As a result, the need for methods, or at least feedback from experts, to bring all these elements together so that they can further contribute to improving business performance is becoming paramount.

To meet this need for integration of these industrial components, the concept of control architecture was proposed.

The first part of this dossier analyzes the very nature of industrial process control architectures. The second part describes the various functions at the heart of these architectures, which contribute to the overall real-time control process. The third part focuses on one of the facets of this control process, namely its ability to react to operating hazards. Finally, the fourth part gives an overview of the approaches proposed to date to give the control process the ability to reconfigure all or part of the physical and software control architecture.