A review on automation systems available is done as an exercise. This task is not obligatory, but you will get extra points for the exam by doing it.

The exercise is carried out in a group of two students. First, a general view on the market is had by searching for automation system products on manufacturers' and importers' web pages. Then, one of the automation systems is pointed out for each group to be explored more closely. A report is sent to me no later than on Monday, 5th February, before the lectures. I will go through the reports in my lecture that day.

At least the following properties of the automation system have to be described in the report:

• the name of the system
• manufacturer
• place of manufacture
• process area(s) that the system is mainly used in (paper, food, chemical or other industry)
• most important market area (North America/Europe or any applicable market area)
• general functional description
  • distribution i.e. division of the functions into different stations/computers
  • distribution/centralizing of the I/O units
  • basic applications (operating system[s], openess [Open Source])
  • Application programming (how, by whom)
  • operation, user interface (UI)
  • alarm processing
  • special properties
• number of I/O connections
  • in a typical configuration
  • maximum allowed by the system structure

In the report, tell also about the general impression you had on the system and the company, based on the information on their web pages.

Send the report to me as web page (email the link to your web site), PDF, OpenOffice or Word-document, or plain, unformatted email.