Process industry undecided about PLCs
During the past three years, the percentage of process companies that believe PLCs are suitable for process control has risen by nearly 20%.
During the past three years, the percentage of process companies that believe programmable logic controllers (PLCs) are suitable for process control has risen by nearly 20%.
A recent European survey, conducted by IMS Research, found that nearly 90% of end-users active in process industries now believe this to be true.
These results suggest that the investment made by many leading PLC manufacturers to improve the process control capability of their products has, to some extent, paid off.
However, the results also indicate that this does not open the door for PLCs to take over the process controller market.
IMS Research analyst, John Devlin, says: "Despite the increased confidence in the capabilities of PLCs, it does not appear that customers within the process sectors will start to use them instead of a DCS or hybrid controller en masse.
In fact, the companies surveyed expected their use of PLCs to hardly change over the next three years".
The survey also showed similar results for DCS and only PC-based controllers were expected to see notable increased use by the end of 2004.
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