PLC scepticism
20 Dec 2002
The process industry in Europe has still not yet made up its mind about the benefits of programmable logic controllers (PLCs), according to a report from market researcher IMS.
Although some 90 per cent of end-users believe that PLCs are suitable for process control, hardly any users thought their use of the devices would increase in the next three years, it says.
The number of companies believing that PLCs can handle process control has jumped by 20 per cent in the last three years, says research analyst John Devlin.
'These results suggest that the investment made by many leading PLC manufacturers to improve the process capability of their products has, to some extent, paid off,' he comments. But this doesn't mean that they are willing to swap their DCS or hybrid controller for a PLC.
In fact, Devlin says, the only sector of the control market which was thought likely to make gains in the next three years was PC-based controllers.
