Award in Industrial Process Controllers

Targeted Applicants: Already employed persons in this sector without formal qualifications and persons interested to enhance their knowledge on Programming Logic Controllers

Entry Requirements: Level 3 technical knowledge and skills

Study Programme Description:

This is a practice-based unit to develop learners’ underpinning knowledge and enable them to demonstrate practical skills which are then applied to three-term controllers and to programming PLCs. The application of three-term controllers and PLCs as industrial process controllers will enable students to gain an understanding of how they are used in industry to control a number of processes in the modern manufacturing industry.

On completion of the unit learners will know about various types of control systems and their utilisation in the industrial world and be familiar with the both open and close loop systems as well as learners will experience first hand the tuning of PLC’s to have a stable and optimum transient response of the system

Study Programme Learning Outcomes:

LO 1 – Describe the control system, types of control systems and their utilisation in the industrial world.

LO 2 – Explain the operational characteristics of three term controllers and briefly describe various types of tuning methods in order to tune the three term controllers to have stable transient response of the system

LO 3 – Discuss the various types of programmable logic controllers and describe the operational characteristics of a PLC.

LO 4 – Write the PLC programmes, identify the errors in the PLC programmes and briefly explain various methods to overcome those errors.

Study Programme Assessment Method:

Summative home-based assessment – easy/ report type. Learners are expected to describe open loop, close loop and their characterises.

Formative assessment with constructive feedback during lab sessions. During lab sessions, learners are expected to experience direct programming of a range of PLC’s to perform a range of functions.

Summative Hands-on programming assessment. Learners are expected to write a PLC programme, identify errors and briefly explain various methods to overcome errors