Industrial Control System (ICS)

Industrial Control System (ICS) is a general term that encompasses several types of control systems and associated instrumentation used for industrial process control. Such systems can range in size from a few modular panel-mounted controllers to large interconnected and interactive distributed control systems with many thousands of field connections. Systems receive data from remote sensors measuring process variables (PVs), compare the collected data with desired setpoints (SPs), and derive command functions which are used to control a process through the final control elements (FCEs), such as control valves. Larger systems are usually implemented by supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, or distributed control systems (DCS), and programmable logic controllers (PLCs), though SCADA and PLC systems are scalable down to small systems with few control loops. Such systems are extensively used in industries such as chemical processing, pulp and paper manufacture, power generation, oil and gas processing, and telecommunications.