The Future of Industrial Automation

Globalization is driving automation into emerging markets where standards and a skilled workforce don’t exist. Manufacturers need a strategy for international standards that will help them control costs and maximize productivity across both emerging and developed markets. The natural progression in across both worlds will be to apply advanced technologies to increase ease of use by an order of magnitude. Much like the evolution of the automobile, automation will embed technologies in such a way that they are transparent to the user and allow untrained users to not only operate but also become capable of performing self-guided maintenance tasks. Leading the way is the convergence of functionalities on a single HMI dashboard, as part of an integrated control capability based on international standards.