The considerations on automation in the tobacco industry throughout the past decade and in the coming decade are introduced with a remark on the extraordinarily short periods of development with regard to automation components, particularly those of electronics. In the first main part the automation status in the tobacco industry of the year 1970 is being described. An important characteristic was that the concept of process automation had already been determined being today's and probably also tomorrow's working basis. Components and automation equipment, however, were still going through a phase of stormy developments. The main features of this development until today are being described in the second section. The next section deals with the use of new automation possibilities in the tobacco industry. Here, the difference between the technical aspect of tobacco primary processing and the cigarette-production-process being equipped with high-capacity machines is pointed out, since automation with regard to the cigarette-production-process had started earlier and developed differently. Only recently did the automation concept in tobacco primary processing become more refined and has been complemented by the increased employment of new devices, in particular the employment of micro-processors and micro-computers; the multi-level-concept. Free-programmable control is, because of its far-reaching possibilities, introduced more extensively. The last aspect of the past deals with advantages, in particular, however, with the disadvantages of automation. The element of unreliability of large automation-facilities and ways to increase the degree of reliability are particularly emphasized when talking about the disadvantages. An extrapolation of developments having so far come to the fore with regard to automation components in the future is being attempted in the second main part. The assumption that the electronic industry, in particular, the computer industry will become more efficient keeping prices nonetheless essentially on the same level leads to the conclusion that the tobacco industry as well will expand its future automation using entirely new possibilities. This then leads to the question as to what are necessary requirements of the tobacco industry for future automation. Despite careful statements as to the future, concrete suggestions are being made for both categories. The establishment of realistic borderlines between avoidable and unavoidable consequences of automation is also, if however exemplarily, attempted by way of comparison. The last two sections are summed up once more in the last part of the lecture by using maxims.