CRAIG RESNICK, ARC ADVISORY GROUP, RESEARCH DIRECTOR

The breakdown of barriers between automation and operations management will accelerate in 2008 with the deployment of collaborative production systems (CPS) that operate in a single environment where applications such as plant asset management, performance management, product lifecycle management (PLM) and scheduling will plug seamlessly into the same communications infrastructure and environment as the multi-disciplined single database programmable automation controller (PAC). CPS emphasizes the elimination of barriers to contextualized, rolebased information, which highlights the need for enhanced collaboration between corporate IT and automation groups.