THILO SAUTER, STEFAN SOUCEK, WOLFGANG KASTNER, and DIETMAR DIETRICH T his article gives an overview of the general concepts, underly- ing technologies, similarities, and differences in the factory and building automation fields and explores issues and trends. Particular emphasis is put on the information aspects in automation, such as communication and integration, that used to be a central topic during the last few decades and are being addressed by maturing solutions only recently. The predominant overall goal of automation has always been to make proc- esses more efficient, in the sense that automation relieves humans from work that can be delegated to machines that can ultimately do it faster, with higher precision and output, and at a reduced cost. This approach is applicable to vari- ous aspects of life, and therefore, it is no wonder that automation has different faces covering discrete manufacturing (the first economically important appli- cation area of automation), continuous processes, energy generation and distri- bution, building control and management, transport telematics, and many more. Finding means to implement automation and achieve its ambitious goals has always been a driving force for the art of engineering and a challenge for diverse fields such as mechanical engineering, control engineering, computer science, and of course, all facets of electrical engineering. In particular, industrial electronics plays an important and actually twofold role in automation. On the one hand, electronic systems are an essential prereq- uisite for all modern automation concepts. It is therefore not surprising that an Past, Present, and Future Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIE.2011.942175 Date of publication: 23 September 2011 © PHOTODISC 1932-4529/11/$26.00&2011IEEE SEPTEMBER 2011 n IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE 35