Controlled progress

Recent advances in control and instrumentation mean that relatively small, but steady increments are being made — particularly in electronics — to enable components and systems to be smaller, lighter, faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and easier to configure and install.

Companies such as

and

are championing a new control development — the programmable automation controller (PAC). This allows superior programmability compared to programmable logic controllers (PLCs). PACs promise greater interoperability and are software-driven, making them compatible with a wide range of I/O devices.

Ian Bell of National Instruments said: 'They are also easier to customise using familiar interfaces and low-level languages. As it is unnecessary to use "C" programming using software such as Labview to get them to work, the number of people able to do custom automation tasks has grown.'

One area increasing in popularity is the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tagging to monitor components during manufacture. Driven by the enormous decrease of both size and cost of radio frequency transmitters and readers, as well as superior data storage capacity, RFID tags — essentially mini hard drives — are superseding traditional barcode systems.