The PROFINET one-day training event here in Portland is over and we continue to offer a balanced program; e.g., we get an equal number of “do more demos” and “do fewer demos.” So I guess we’ll stay the course.
Lately at these training sessions the light bulb seems to go on earlier about the value of PROFINET’s Component Based Automation’s (CBA) peer-to-peer configuration instead of programming. This session we talked more about its ability to integrate diverse networks form diverse control makers. But more importantly, we showed that even in a mono-vendor environment tremendous savings in engineering time are inherent.
I just finished having dinner with a couple of the exhibitors and they were pleased with the upsurge in PROFINET activity – both sales of products and user demand for products. Our discussion tried to turn into an argument about the level of penetration of fieldbuses in the discrete world. It was universally agreed that in the process world it’s 20% more or less. I thought one of my colleagues was arguing that fieldbuses were universal in the discrete world. Turns out he really meant that PLCs were universal. I have to agree with that. Gone are the days when we developed relay ladder logic on D-sized vellum with a Universal Arm drafting machine and implemented the project with actual relays. I enjoy blogging, phoning, emailing, and IMing, but there’s no substitute for getting together in person!
Tomorrow will be another airport/airplane day, so hopefully I’ll get caught up on my magazine article referrals/comments…