Glossary · System coordination, integration and orchestration
Supervisory coordination
Also known as: Hierarchical coordination
German: Übergeordnete Koordination
In industrial automation, supervisory coordination is coordination of several machines, units or subsystems through a higher-level instance, the supervisory controller, which issues commands and targets to subordinate controllers and resolves conflicts between them.
- System integration
In one sentence
Supervisory coordination aligns machines or units through a higher-level controller that issues commands and resolves conflicts between them.
Example
A line supervisor coordinates the speed of all machines in a bottling line so that buffers stay within their target fill levels.
How it applies
- Engineering: Supervisory coordination centralizes decisions that need a global view, such as line speed, mode changes and resource allocation, while machines keep local control. Specify which decisions are made centrally and which locally.
- Availability: A failure at the supervisory level must not leave machines in undefined states. Define autonomous fallback behavior, for example running at a safe default speed or holding.
- Commissioning: Test the coordination with realistic disturbances and with one machine not responding.
- Documentation: Document the coordination rules, the commands and states exchanged and the fallback behavior in the functional specification and plant-level operating instructions.
Supervisory coordination vs. peer-to-peer coordination
In supervisory coordination, a higher level directs the machines. In peer-to-peer coordination, machines coordinate directly through handshakes. Supervisory coordination makes global optimization easier; peer-to-peer coordination avoids a central dependency.