The here and now of PC Control

Edited by the Processingtalk editorial team Feb 28, 2005

An open letter to the editor: While PLC and PC technology can be mixed and matched to meet the needs of many industrial applications, these technologies no longer need to complement each other

While it's true to say that PLC and PC technology can be mixed and matched to meet the needs of many industrial applications, it must also be realised that there is no longer a need for these technologies to complement each other.

Embedded PCs provide versatility, performance and value for money and simply cannot be rivaled by PLCs on any level.

For a start, PC-based control systems offer totally dependable, deterministic real time performance, even in the most demanding control applications, making the PC platform remarkably stable.

What's more, PC control is no longer futuristic or fanciful - it is practical and deliverable.

Continental's tyre manufacturing plant in Timisoara, Romania was the world's first fully PC controlled factory as well as Europe's most advanced factory for the mass production of tyres.

By using PC control the plant cut installation and commissioning costs by half compared with PLC based technology.

The increasing use of industrial Ethernet is creating even more pull for PC-based control.

By using conventional Ethernet components to link all PC controls, data can be archived, recipes managed centrally and data acquired directly from the production plant control system.

Ethernet is widely understood, available anywhere, reasonably robust, has high bandwidth and high speed.

Communication options such as Bluetooth and broadband will soon be playing a larger part in the factory and PC-based control is already opening the door for these.

The scalability, reliability and flexibility of PC-based systems mean it is undoubtedly the future of control.

Strong evidence proves that specifiers are rapidly turning their backs on expensive and inflexible proprietary PLCs, as PC-based control consistently proves that it is no longer only suitable for specific applications, but that it is capable of running entire factories.