Automation provides the programmable devices that permit greater flexibility in the operation of these complex manufacturing systems.
The International Society of Automation is a non-profit member-driven organization, which is built on a backbone of volunteers.
[3] Volunteers, working together with the ISA's full-time staff, are key to the ongoing mission and success of the organization.
These departments are: ISA was officially established as the Instrument Society of America on 28 April 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Individuals like Rimbach and others involved in industry saw a need for the sharing of information about instruments on a national basis, as well as for standards and uniformity.
In the years following, ISA continued to expand its products and services, increasing the size and scope of the ISA conference and exhibition, developing symposia, offering professional development and training, adding technical Divisions, and even producing films about measurement and control.
In 1980, ISA moved its headquarters to Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina, and a training center was established in nearby Raleigh.
In 1997, the headquarters and training center were consolidated in a new building in RTP, where the society's day-to-day activities are managed by a professional staff of approximately 75.
[4] Honorary membership is conferred only upon those individuals who have made noteworthy contributions to the profession and does not require payment of dues.
Many sections sponsor training courses, conduct periodic trade shows, and act as a resource to the local industrial community.
Reflecting their primacy in ISA's early days, sections retain pre-eminent governance authority, as ISA's legislative body, the Council of Society Delegates, is composed of section representatives (delegates) who hold voting power equal to the size of their membership.
ISA also has nearly 200 student sections, in locations all over the world, principally where the economy has a substantial manufacturing component, and instrumentation and industrial automation are vital academic programs.
ISA's 16 technical divisions, established for the purpose of increased information exchange within tightly focused segments of the fields of instrumentation, systems, and automation are organized under the Automation & Technology or Industries & Sciences Departments, depending upon the nature of the division.
ISA standards cover a wide range of concepts of importance to instrumentation and automation professionals.
Another significant ISA standard family is the batch processing standards of ANSI/ISA-88.00.01 Models and Terminology, ANSI/ISA-88.00.02 Data Structures and Guidelines for Languages, and ANSI/ISA-88.00.03 General and Site Recipe Models and Representation, which are products of the ISA-88 Batch Control committee.
This standard was approved by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as a publicly available specification, or PAS in September 2011.
For example: International Society of Automation security standards are mentioned on the United States Computer Emergency Response Team website.
InTech circulation includes all 31,000 ISA members, as well as several thousand other recipients, who are classified as "qualified" subscribers.
The quarterly publication ISA Transactions,[9] published by Elsevier, is a referred journal of scholarly material, for which the intended audience is research and development personnel from academy and industry in the field of process instrumentation, systems, and automation.
Each of these is designed to be an objective, third-party assessment and confirmation of an individual's professional abilities and technical skills.
Each certification is granted based on a combination of formal education/training, professional experience, and performance on a written examination.
The ISA used to have a third certification program called Certified Industrial Maintenance Mechanic (CIMM) which was established in 2004.