FUTURE TRENDS IN AUTOMATION

摘要

Jonathan Wilkins, marketing director of obsolete equipment supplier, EU Automation, discusses the key technologies that we can expect to make their mark in the year ahead One of the first innovations that shaped the industrial automation industry, the programmable logic controller (PLC), came about almost by accident. On New Year's Day in 1968, Dick Morley arrived at work with an awful hangover. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to work through it, as he had to finish a design for a customer's control system and the deadline was fast approaching. It was on this day that Morley realised that designing a different industrial system for each customer was not very efficient, and instead drew up a plan for the PLC.