"Low-Cost" Factory Automation

Abstract “Low cost” and intelligent automation is an efficient tool especially for small and medium sized companies today. While “low cost” devices and concepts for automation of continuous processes are commercially available today concepts for discontinuous processes especially for manufacturing automation are in developing. Therefore in this paper a modular and open “low cost” concept will be presented and shortly discussed. It consists of a network of PC's superimposed by a host computer. This concept is illustrated by application examples