🪜 The Automation Pyramid0%
🪜 The Suspiciously Fun PLC Series · Cross-brand

The Automation Pyramid:
from millisecond to month.

Sensors, PLCs, SCADA, MES, ERP: you've met the pieces, and this is the map that stacks them. The ISA-95 (Purdue) model has five levels, from the physical floor up to the boardroom. What separates those levels is mostly time. The bottom thinks in milliseconds and the top in months, and every layer translates between its neighbors. Climb it once and DCS, SCADA, PLC+HMI, historians and IIoT all snap into place, which is exactly the systems thinking an interview is probing for.

Every level translates for its neighbors

🪜 each level turns its neighbor's language into its own: a sales order (L4) becomes a schedule (L3) becomes a recipe (L2) becomes setpoints (L1) becomes a moving valve (L0). Up the same path, a moving valve becomes a KPI becomes a P&L line.

Time is the hidden axis

⏱️ the levels differ by time horizon far more than by importance: milliseconds at the bottom, months at the top. Get that and you'll never again ask a PLC to do ERP's job, or an ERP to close a loop.

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Vendor-neutral: ISA-95 / IEC 62264 and the Purdue model are standards, not products. The levels map onto Siemens, Rockwell, Schneider, Honeywell, AVEVA, SAP, Oracle and the rest, and also onto the DCS, SCADA and PLC+HMI worlds you already know.
The map for the whole academy: D8 is L1, D11/D13 are L2, and this module shows where they all sit.