These are the days of automation. Most of the works that were performed manually or using primitive tools have now been automated with the use of machinery with advanced technologies. Instrument engineering is the process through which the equipment that are used for designing and configuration of systems that are automated.



Process automation is widely used in chemical or manufacturing plants. The basic objective is always to enhance the productive capacity of the plant concerned. Side wise the process also aims at improving the reliability and optimizing the stability of the plant.

Instrument engineering is also known as instrumentation engineering in some circles. Industrial automation means the process of managing industries in a self dictated manner. Such self dictating could be made with the use of computer technology or some other processes. However, the major media for automation today is the information technology that performs the task mostly by way of intelligent programming.

An instrument engineer has a much wider scope in performing the task than he used to have in the days of mechanization. In the process of mechanization, people were assisted with the supply of tools and machineries so that they could meet the manual requirements of the task in hand. In the said process that was an improvement over the manual labour in the sense that such labour put up either by human beings or animals were replaced with machines. Obviously the tasks were performed in a better way but it was no where near the efficiency of the modern day Instrument engineering.

Automation is thus a further progress and improvement over the process of mechanization. You must appreciate that mechanization was not mere use of hand tools but included steam, electricity or power driven machines. For example, instead of hand held lathe, people used power driven lathe machines to carry on different tasks with metals and tools. Such instrument design was superior to the earlier native tools used by the people.

Gradually however, mechanization started falling short of the requirements of modern fiercely competitive commercial world. Engineers and scientists therefore were on the constant look out for some thing better and faster to deliver the desired results. The search for such means resulted in the evolution of the concept of Instrument engineering, the process of automation.

The Global economy is highly influenced by the process of automation. The task of an instrument engineer is cut out to day. They try to join together the automated equipments and tools based on mathematical analysis and create complex processes for an ever increasing range of such equipments in all spheres of social activities.

It does not mean that the prophecy regarding man being dominated by machine is going to come true in near future. Even today no such instrument design has been devised that could match the efficiency of many human limbs. For example, till date no automated machine could be devised that would replace effectively the function of human eyes. It becomes even more difficult when it comes to identifying abstract senses like human social patterns, languages and reproduction abilities inherent in living beings. These are feelings and no machine can exactly identify their intensity perfectly however modern they could be or whatever advanced technologies they might have applied.