Walk into a modern shop floor and the contrast is immediate. Bright collaborative robot arms move with practised precision next to conveyors that have been running since the 1990s.
Touchscreen dashboards glow above workstations where an operator still keeps a grease-stained notebook with the real setup parameters.
That juxtaposition is the current state of factory automation: a layered environment where each new capability has to coexist with what came before. [Read more…] about Factory Automation: Bridging Promise and Real-World Production