Waiting for the new industrial revolution

摘要

Ian Jones, principal engineer at high performance engineering consultancy KWSP, believes the increasing use of IPCs is central to the delivery of Industry 4.0 Industry 4.0 is certainly one of the manufacturing buzzwords of 2016. And while its transformational promise is yet to be fully realised in the UK, there are several building blocks within our engineering infrastructure that need to be established before the digital revolution can take place. A crucial element within manufacturing DNA is the automated control system. This function has been traditionally undertaken by the PLC - a very robust, albeit monolithic, solution to automation control that has been around since the late sixties.