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Industries Tutorials
The same technologies (instruments, PLCs, DCS, SCADA, historians, MES and ERP) are used very differently in a pharmaceutical plant, a water utility or a refinery. These guides explain how each industry works, its key processes and measurements, its automation architecture and its typical challenges.
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Start Here
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Process Industries
- Pharmaceutical Manufacturing An engineer's tour of pharmaceutical manufacturing: oral solid dose and biologics processes, clean utilities and cleanrooms, instrumentation, PLC/DCS and batch control, SCADA, historian, MES and electronic batch records, LIMS, ERP, validation and data integrity.
- Food and Beverage How food and beverage plants are automated: raw material intake, batching, heat treatment, filling and packaging lines, clean-in-place, hygienic design, allergen control, traceability, OEE, and the PLC, SCADA, MES and ERP systems behind them.
- Oil Refining An automation engineer's view of a refinery: crude distillation and conversion units, tank farms and utilities, DCS and advanced process control, safety instrumented and fire and gas systems, online analysers, custody transfer, historian, LIMS and refinery planning systems.
- Cement, Steel and Mining How heavy process industries are automated: cement plants (raw mill, preheater and kiln, clinker cooler, cement mill, kiln control and analysers), steelmaking (blast furnace and BOF or electric arc furnace, casting, rolling mills with level 1 and level 2 automation), and mining and mineral processing (crushing, grinding, flotation, conveyors, autonomous haulage), with common challenges.
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Utilities and Energy
- Water and Wastewater How drinking water and wastewater plants are automated: treatment stages, key instruments (turbidity, chlorine, pH, dissolved oxygen, flow, level), aeration and pump control, distribution networks, SCADA and telemetry, energy, compliance reporting and cybersecurity.
- Thermal Power Plants How steam and combined-cycle power plants are controlled: water-steam cycle, boiler and HRSG control loops, coordinated boiler-turbine control, burner management, turbine control and protection, generator excitation, electrical protection, emissions monitoring, DCS and grid requirements.
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Discrete Manufacturing
- Automotive Plants How a car plant is automated: press shop, body shop with welding robots, paint shop with pretreatment and e-coat, final assembly with sequencing, torque control and end-of-line testing, and EV battery assembly; control architecture (PLCs, robots, safety, networks), MES functions such as sequencing, build instructions, error-proofing and traceability, and typical challenges.
- Semiconductor Fabs How semiconductor manufacturing is automated: front-end wafer processing and back-end assembly and test, SEMI equipment standards (SECS-II, GEM, HSMS, E84, E87, E40, E90, E94, Interface A), automated material handling with FOUPs, overhead hoist transport and stockers, MES dispatching and lot tracking, run-to-run control and fault detection, and cleanroom and facility systems.
- Automotive, Aerospace and Electronics (MES)Related guide
- PLCs in Production LinesRelated guide