CE Asia: What are the current trends in industrial networking and communications?Chen: COTS (Comercial Off The Shelf) communication components such as Industrial Ethernet, XML, Web Server etc. will continuously permeate into industrial application in the future. On the one hand, these IT technologies will enhance the integrated ability of industrial application, and on the other hand they also provide a wide-world platform to incorporate industrial fieldbus with commercial application.CE Asia: How do you see the future of wireless communications in the plant?Chen: The requirement of wireless communications in the plant will burst in the future. In the past, the wireless infrastructure and security technology were not mature. However, with the improvement of software and hardware, we can see the wireless application in LAN such as ZigBee, RFID etc. is dazzling.CE Asia: What advice would you give manufacturers wanting to automate their plant?Chen: Using PACs in automation plant is a new trend. I would suggest that manufacturers survey if their devices conform to the following five features: (1) Multi-domain functionality—including logic, motion, HMI and process control—on a single platform, (2) A common development platform for the design and integration of multi-domain automated systems, (3) Allow OEMs and end users to deploy multiple control applications on a single platform, (4) Facilitate open, modular control architectures that enable highly distributed automated plant environments, (5) Employ de facto standards for network interfaces, languages, etc., to allow data exchange as part of networked multi-vendor systems.
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