After reading a recent article in Control Design I felt this was a good opportunity to blog about how data acquisition and networking connectivity are synergistic and how these two critical components enable real-time visibility, operational agility and flexibility, which is the theme of VDC’s recently published industrial networking infrastructure products research as well as ongoing research we are conducting on data acquisition solutions.
Although VDC does not cover the PLC market the article’s relevancy lies in pointing out the strong need among corporations to capture data from their factory floor operations (i.e. sensors, controllers, HMI, etc.) and an efficient means by which to transfer that data to other parts of the organization for some actionable purpose, if not just simply for monitoring a process or the health of a piece of equipment, etc. Networking, through the advent and adoption of industrial Ethernet and related protocols, has provided companies with the ability to leverage distributed intelligence throughout their automation operations.
The global recession of 2009 had a deep and, I believe, long lasting impact on the psyche of most organizations with a belief that competitive survival is predicated on squeezing every last bit of efficiency (or was it sweat equity?) out of every part of an organization. Getting access to data through the use of standards-based networks, faster hardware and cutting edge data acquisition solutions ensures greater interoperability and real-time visibility, operational agility and flexibility. The factory floor was perhaps one of the last few bastions which historically was allowed (or tolerated) to operate within its own world with its own unique processes and proprietary standards.
The demand for data acquisition solutions and the industrial networking infrastructure products used to transfer the data will continue to grow as companies realize that their ability to achieve real-time visibility, operational agility and flexibility will play the critical role in their ability to survive and thrive in an ever more challenging and competitive global marketplace.
If you check out two of my blogs posted on 4/19 and 4/25 you will get the picture that the combined markets for networking products (wireline and wireless) is large (>$2.5 billion) and is expected to experience some healthy demand in the coming years. Although the research in support of our data acquisition solutions research is ongoing and no final market estimates are available, early readouts indicate that the markets for external chassis and modules and plug-in analog I/O boards will likely total over $800 million worldwide. Now that is some real synergy.
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