Production equipment control involves production equipment that resides in the shop floor

Shop floor

--The Shop floor literally is the floor of a factory where people work on machines, or the space in a retail establishment where goods are sold to customers...

 of a manufacturing company and its purpose is to produce goods of a wanted quality when provided with production resources of a required quality. In modern production line

Production line

A production line is a set of sequential operations established in a factory whereby materials are put through a refining process to produce an end-product that is suitable for onward consumption; or components are assembled to make a finished article....

s the production equipment is fully automated using industrial control methods and involves limited unskilled labour participation. Modern production equipment consists of mechatronic modules that are integrated according to a control architecture. The most widely known architectures involve hierarchy

Hierarchy

A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...

, polyarchy

Polyarchy

In modern political science, the term polyarchy was introduced by Robert A. Dahl, now emeritus professor at Yale University, to describe a form of government in which power is vested in three or more persons. This form of government was first implemented in the United States and was gradually...

, hetaerarchy and hybrid. The methods for achieving a technical effect are described by control algorithms, which may or may not utilize formal methods in their design.