A quiet but unmistakable evolution is sweeping through today’s plants and factories. Prodded by increasing computing power, automation steadily transforms our manufacturing, process, and assembly plants. Fully programmable-precision robots are replacing human operators, often performing tasks faster, more accurately, and more reliably. PCs are populating the factory floor. Wireless communications, along with industrial-grade Ether-nets, continues to revolutionize manufacturing. Advances in integrating the sensing elements — the eyes and ears of the factory floor — with hardened networking technologies promise to make factory operations more efficient and profitable. This trend should broaden over the next couple of years as computing power advances.

Technologically advanced tools like these are forcing old-line plant managers to rethink their approaches to automation. With increasingly shorter time-to-market, more sophisticated designs being called for, and intense worldwide competition reflected in ever-lower product prices, automation is the only approach they can justify. The old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” no longer applies if they want to stay in business.

Once a rare sight on the factory floor, PCs are becoming more commonplace in manufacturing for control and materials-handling applications. They’re starting to replace programmable-logic controllers (PLCs), with a single PC often replacing dozens of PLCs while offering superior information integration, ease of use, and better I/O communications. The trend depends more on software rather than hardware and leverages the continuing advances in computational power and decreasing cost. Some automation experts argue that this simply makes more sense in the long term.

Source: Electronic Design