What will be of the PLC under Industrial 4.0 Time?

At the end of 2016, a forum launched a discussion of high-end PLC. To say that high-end, there may not be a PLC can not produce their own business PLC high-end, even if not high-end that their own PLC features! So this is a matter of opinion. At present, the industry 4.0 in China is also in full swing in the discussion, then, what kind of PLC can adapt to the industry's "flexible manufacturing" requirements? Such a PLC may be called high-end PLC.

Since the industrial 4.0 flexible manufacturing, I am full of curiosity, I know the current PLM, MES performance has reached a considerable level, but in the end how to make PLC production tasks? In the PLC in advance enumeration? According to the production process changes to the PLC programming? Obviously, both ways have serious problems! Enumeration, programming complex easy to miss, poor process adaptability; re-PLC programming is not discussed, this is the world is currently using the way, can not solve the MES and PLC that wall! Flexible manufacturing requires a flexible PLC, who can solve this problem, may be able to comply with the trend of industrial 4.0, basically called high-end PLC.

FCS system has been put forward for a long time, it is the intelligent execution unit through the bus to obtain information to achieve independent control of the system. Its superiority is not CCS system and DCS system can be compared. Most businesses will not realize FCS blame in a variety of field bus control protocol, "language" is not uniform, how can we achieve? So competing to fieldbus unified to its own equipment favorable bus. Time proves that this is almost a long and long process. A variety of bus protocols are historical issues, as high-end PLC should not solve this problem? Situation, bus problem solved, FCS to achieve it? How many different manufacturers of intelligent device unit programming? Do not say that the requirements of intelligent equipment unit manufacturers according to different process programming! What does this mean? This shows that our PLC needs an innovative model to solve these problems. This is the visible high end.

I believe that the discussion of this topic, are the industrial control, but called the high-end PLC, the inevitable intelligence is strong, if there is a PLC to break with the MES that wall, PLC programming has become very simple, almost The description of the process, do you still have the mood to discuss this topic? Do not say this is impossible, abacus era, it was said that the invention of the calculator, abacus also said impossible! Therefore, high-end PLC should have the programming is very simple, as much as possible to hide those who have nothing to do with the production process details, such as: data, databases, variables, communications and so on.

Of course, high-end PLC not only has the above characteristics, such as: high reliability, redundancy is simple, high-speed synchronization of motion control and so on. Industrial 4.0, there should be compatible with the PLC, such a PLC away from us how far? Such a PLC you really want to use? Let's wait and see!