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The first PLCs were developed for specific applications-reprogrammable test installations
in the automobile manufacturing business, replacing hard-wired relay-logic, which was hard
to modify. Over the past four decades, PLCs have spread throughout the industry, and the
PLC market segment has grown to several billions of dollars worldwide.
Initially, PLC applications remained focused around discrete automation markets, while
DCS expanded primarily in process control systems. Then PLCs expanded into control of
remote I/O systems with I/O clusters that could be easily connected as industrial networks.
Soon personal computers became the easiest way to connect DCS, PLCs, and remote I/O into
the rapidly expanding hierarchy of industrial networks, giving rise to a variety of "fieldbus"
developments.
Another major industrial automation segment is termed "Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition" (SCADA). This loose conglomeration of products and innovations from several
different sources remained fragmented between several markets and applications till
networked PCs and Windows-based human-machine interface (HMI) software arrived in the
late 1980s and 1990s.
Several innovative startups grew rapidly, providing HMI software with connections to
remote PLCs and industrial I/O. Wonderware (started by engineer Dennis Morin) was paced
by Intellution (founded by ex-Foxboro engineer Steve Rubin). There were several other
startups in the same timeframe, but few achieved significance.
The large process controls suppliers inevitably acquired the leaders. Wonderware was
acquired by Invensys, which owned Foxboro; Emerson acquired Intellution as a key part of its
DCS strategy, which developed into Delta V. Intellution it now part of GE Enterprise
Solutions. There are still several independent software companies, branching out to serve
other industrial market needs, such as MES, security, and wireless.

Sensors and actuators
Industrial instrumentation includes inputs (sensors) and outputs (actuators) and all the
"stuff" in between. Rosemount started with specialty temperature sensors (RTDs) and then
grew with the development of its capacitive differential pressure transducers, rapidly
overtaking the traditional leaders-Foxboro and Honeywell. The company was eventually
acquired by Emerson, which also acquired other innovative sensor companies, such as Brooks
(flow), Beckman (pH), and the like.
At the actuator end of the automation business, Fisher Controls was started in Iowa,
making innovative valves and actuators. This company was also acquired by Emerson, which
now had sensors and actuators. Interestingly, Rosemount and Fisher tried to grow by
branching out into DCS, but their offerings were relatively insignificant till Emerson put them
together with PCs and software to generate leadership with the combination that is now
Emerson Process Systems.
Future growth
Extrapolating automation history forward is an interesting challenge. In the past, growth
inflection points have developed from innovative products (DCS, PLC, sensors, actuators, and
software). Today, growth is coming primarily from global expansion and services.

2 Learn the meaning of the following words and word-combinations, word groups:

a hotbed of new products-improved sensors, gismos, to test new ideas, targeting specific
unmet needs, to grow the company beyond the initial entrepreneurial stages, it has morphed
into a variety of different shapes, discrete and batch systems, programmable logic controller
(PLC), replacing hard-wired relay-logic, hard to modify, global expansion and services, to
serve industrial market needs, security, wireless.

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