激进的创新是破坏性的。它创造了一个拐点，为创新者产生了快速的增长，并且对于那些陷入古老范式的人的不可避免的堕落。在自动化企业中，少数公司起源于彻底的新技术来产生增长;通常，商业技术适用于工业需求。两个最大的工业测量和控制系统 - 可编程逻辑控制器（PLC）和分布式控制系统（DCS） - 1970年代的ERA发展，但为未来提供了暗示。
发明了PLC在回应你的需要.S. automotive manufacturers. Control, sequencing, and safety interlock logic for automobile production was accomplished using large numbers of relays, cam timers, drum sequencers and dedicated closed-loop controllers. Because electricians needed to rewire hard-wired backplanes, the process for updating facilities for the yearly model changeover was time consuming and expensive. PLC relay ladder logic allowed quick re-programming by the average electrician. Some four decades later, the PLC has become a commodity and the market is worth several billions of dollars.
DCS reduced the complexity of large central control rooms with mainframe computers by offering much smaller size at a drastically reduced price. DCS has now morphed into different shapes, sizes and form-factors; this market segment too has expanded to several billions of dollars worldwide.
While there are isolated pockets of growth in the automation business, no other innovations have succeeded in achieving an equivalent inflection point by offering improvements of ten times or more in price, performance and operating advantages.
The only recent innovation that was developed to address true customer needs is Emerson Process Management’s CHARMS. Recognizing that input/output (I/O) connections represent the bulk of wiring in the typical process control system, this innovative rethink of I/O wiring, called “I/O on Demand,” essentially eliminates the need for a physical path from signal-source to controller. Instead, new single-channel CHARacterization ModuleS (CHARMS - cute name) relay I/O info via the Ethernet backbone to any controller, providing single channel integrity and flexibility down to the channel level. On a typical project with thousands of hardwired points, I/O-on-demand can eliminate as much as 90 percent of intra-cabinet wiring—the magical 10-times improvement which signals an inflection point in the market.
下一步创新
可能下一个自动化创新paradig哪里m shift occur? For one, wireless is a broad-based enabling technology, but most automation majors have failed to pursue the true breadth and depth of the shift in capabilities. They offer the same form-factor, complexity, sales channels and pricing margins to maintain the same-old, same-old financial ratios. No one has reduced size, price and complexity to a level that stimulates use in a much wider range of applications across broader markets. Soon there will be a plethora of inexpensive WiFi-based sensors all over process plants and factories. Perhaps this can only be done by an upstart, entrepreneurial enterprise or new entries from China or India.
iPad and its equivalents may deliver another automation paradigm shift. One has only to view the dinosaur that blinks on the cover of WIRED magazine, or read the latest issue of Time with touch-text and multi-media advertising, or browse the latest iPad issue of Automation World, to recognize the imminent demise of snail-mail print delivery which arrives days later. Or, what about iPad versions of operator interface? Review the advantages of the latest iPad version of ThinManager 6.0 for example.
自动化是逾期的，以出现新的创新范式。寻找新领导人，以爆炸爆炸性新的增长。
阅读2012年的十个技术趋势将影响自动化团队。访问bit.ly/awtrends001
>> Jim Pinto is a technology futurist, international speaker and automation industry commentator. You can email him atjim@jimpinto.com或审查他的网站预测和预测：www.jimpinto.com。
