IEN: Will wireless become more prevalent in assembly?
Arnold: As assembly operations are pushed to become more flexible and responsive to changing market conditions, wireless will become a necessity in planning flexible manufacturing cells. Wireless provides the ability to move individual pieces of equipment around without having to rewire extensive data cables or I/O cabling to a supervisory controller. The availability of cost effective and secure wireless products is improving and manufacturing operations are looking for ways to make the best possible use of it.
IEN: Will the Internet become more prevalent in assembly?
Arnold: As companies strive to squeeze more profit out of less revenue, the necessity to send an engineer on site to troubleshoot is getting questioned every day. The ability to do remote troubleshooting and diagnostics via the Internet is becoming a high priority, especially when the machine may be installed in Singapore. Security and safety are both major concerns for this issue, but these can be dealt with using existing technology. Machine controllers of smaller size and I/O counts that have Ethernet and thus, Internet accessibility are becoming more and more commonplace. (For an example, click here.)