There is such a profession – to automate production. The abbreviation ACS TP means “automated process control system” – a system consisting of personnel and a set of equipment with software used to automate the functions of this very personnel to control industrial facilities: power plants, boiler plants, pumps, water treatment facilities, food, chemical, metallurgical plants, oil and gas facilities, etc., etc.

In fact, every person who does not live in the woods and uses the benefits of civilization, uses the results of the work of enterprises, which operate the APCS.

Occasionally, there are articles on this topic on the hubra. Usually they are not very popular, but still I want to write a few review articles on the APCS in the hope to tell the Hubrabs something interesting (and perhaps even useful to some) and to attract more of my colleagues on the Hubra.

First, a few words about myself. I’m just starting my life path in automation, I’ve been working for almost two years. During this time I have been on several gas fields, and now I work on an oil field.

Since the field is vast, despite everything developing, in some places contradictory and controversial, I will try to summarize, not to the detriment of the reliability, but I can not avoid skewing in my area – the equipment, software and scope, which I personally encountered.

So, the software and hardware complex of the APCS is divided into three levels: upper (computers), middle (controllers), lower (field equipment, sensors, actuators). I will not talk about the lower level – too far from the subject of this hubra, and the article would get too big.

The upper level

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The upper level – are servers and users’ PCs (we call them ARM – automated workplace). Here you see the state of the technological process, and from here, if necessary, the operator gives commands to change its parameters. To simplify the development, created a large number of SCADA-systems (from supervisory control and data acquisition – supervisory control and data acquisition). This is in some way an extended analogue of the IDE, in which the compiled “program” is executed.