Glossary, Acronyms, and Abbreviations: Beyond Distributed Process Control

The field of distributed process control systems transcends the fields of process control, factory automation, computing, communications (including the phone, video, and Internet industries), desktop publishing (screen displays, reports, information systems), fiber optics, software, hardware, and even psychology (human/machine interface, artificial intelligence).Because of the increasing attempts to link the plant f loor to automatic business planning operations, we now have even more terminology to address.Professional societies, various industrial standards and practices, and many different government agencies are also providing additional domestic and international input.Because of this, a huge collection of cryptic acronyms, abbreviations, and terminology show up in literature on the subject and the definitions sometimes conf lict.Included here are hundreds of multiple meanings across several disciplines.With all of this profound content, I just had to introduce a slight bit of humor as well.I created this continually changing list, which stems from my attempt to understand many magazine articles.I am also personally publishing this growing list as a direct response to the countless questions from the many students I have encountered while teaching many instrumentation courses worldwide, especially those involving distributed processor systems.Because it has been accumulated over such a long period, it would be impossible to properly source every definition.Some selections are modified for their significance to distributed process control from Webster's New World Dictionary of Computer Terms (Simon & Schuster), The New Penguin Dictionary of Electronics by E. C. Young (Viking Penguin), and the ISA Standard on Process Instrumentation Terminology.Some other modified inspirations also came from various issues of Black Box's catalogs (Pittsburgh) and Omega Engineering's catalogs (Stamford, CT) as well as from John Zagame of Moore Process Automation Solutions, Bill Hodson of Honeywell (formerly of Leeds & Northrup) and Gene Murphy of Honeywell.This list will always be incomplete and enigmatic.