Programmable logic controller

And so I was out, like I was working landscaping jobs.

I ended up working at a concrete plant that had, where I was doing like PLC programming, which was kind of neat, basically like telling robots what to do in the concrete factory.

And ended up working at a job where I was basically pulling cable.

So this was during the housing boom of the 90s, I guess, late 90s, early 2000s in Colorado.

you're probably leapfrogging some of the competition out there quite a bit coming with this to market.

I mean, the latest, I just wrote an article on somebody's claim of like the post PLC era about now using an AI controller instead for like motion planning and vision and all the things that you would typically see with a separate vision system, PLC, HMI.

the traditional stack of controlling a robot deterministically.

Now having an all-in-one AI controller with an onboard GPU.

Some people have.

There's three other companies who are really using active inference in their modeling.

Yeah, but that still to me is like, okay, you're kind of just abstracting the PLC onto some CPU cores on an IPC.

But it's still, I mean, you can call it a post-PLC era.

Then you're going to have to manually come in and convert all of them.

And wait, now there's more because the PLCs will no longer support the connection to the new factory talk view SC type of terminals and servers.

So now you're upgrading the PLCs.

Now you're looking at the networks that they're connected through, right? And in many cases, that's going to be data highway plus.

And so now there's, you know, a hundred different problems as a result of this easy migration type of a situation.

Now we're replacing new server.

We have like new servers coming in.

We have new PLCs coming in, new remote racks coming in, new IO coming in, new sensors coming in, new drives coming in, right? So it becomes very expensive on both the hardware software sides, but also on the integration side very quickly, right?

Okay, well, I can understand that because in my own experience, I have had the experience of traveling on a train, which was like a commuter train in Singapore that went from the city all the way to the airport.

And it was all under control of a PLC.

A what? Also, a previous experience I had was with gas turbine engines operating on offshore platforms, and there was no people on the platforms, but yet it was all these units were running.

Three or four of them were running.

They were all under the control of the PLC.

So the technology has been around for a considerable period of time.

The only area that I would feel a little apprehensive about is the roads, buses and cars and taxis and that.

And so I was out, like I was working landscaping jobs.

I ended up working at a concrete plant that had, where I was doing like PLC programming, which was kind of neat, basically like telling robots what to do in the concrete factory.

And ended up working at a job where I was basically pulling cable.

So this was during the housing boom of the 90s, I guess, late 90s, early 2000s in Colorado.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

W- we are starting to build PLC integration via the MTConnect protocol as an additional sensor feed into our platform that allows us to layer in information around the feeds and speeds of the machine, alongside the vibration and power to help give us an understanding.

But the challenge there with MTConnect is I walk into a shop, and not 100% of their machines on their shop floor give you this level of visibility.

Um-

My name is Sean Tierney, Industrial Automation Instructor and Content Creator over at Insights in Automation.

And this week on the show, I have Sina J from Forge.io on to talk about their PLC Copilot, a true AI copilot to help you write PLC code.

I think you guys are going to really enjoy this episode.

But before we get to that, a couple of announcements.

I've just filled up November, September.

We're already halfway through September.

So if you know anybody who needs some custom training, maybe you've got a couple of guys or four or five, six guys who need to learn, maybe they got to learn just compact logics, or maybe they need to learn compact logics in panel view plus, or maybe they need to learn slick 500 PLC five compact logics, panel view plus, um, We can even do MicroLogix, Micro 800.

So if you have any custom training needs, maybe some of your technicians need to get trained this year, I still have time available in October.

And another may have helped pack the delivery box that showed up on your doorstep.

PLCs are everywhere in modern industry.

Siemens makes a lot of them.

In fact, about a third of the machines in the world are controlled by Siemens PLCs.

And every one of those controllers needs to be programmed.

That's the job of automation engineers.

Siemens is investing $1 billion in AI capabilities and offerings over the next three years, building on decades of experience applying technology across industry and infrastructure.

because the next chapter of ai won't be defined only by more powerful models it will also be defined by our ability to employ them in the real world with the industrial context and human expertise required to solve real problems and deliver measurable value That's a quieter kind of progress than a chatbot getting cleverer.