Industrial control systems based on PCs (including embedded PCs) are growing at a rate of more than 20% per year. Major programmable logic controller manufacturers and industrial control system integrators have also accepted the technical route of industrial PC, making the technology one of the mainstream ones at the beginning of this century.

The industrial PC has low cost. This is another important factor to make it popular in industrial control automation. In the traditional automation system, the basic automation part is basically monopolized by PLC and DCS, and the process automation and management automation part is mainly composed of various high-end process computers or minicomputers. The high price of the hardware, system software and application software has discouraged many enterprises.

In the early days of enterprise development, it is the first choice for enterprises to choose low-cost industrial control automation. As a matter of fact, industrial PC-based controllers are proven to be as reliable as PLCs. They are easy to be accepted by operators and maintenance personnel, easy to install and use. Not to say features such as the ability to realize advanced diagnostic functions provide system integrators with more flexible options. Thus, more and more manufacturers have begun to use industrial PC control solutions in production.

The industrial PC has complex data and high equipment integration. It can be predicted that the competition between industrial PCs and PLCs will mainly be in high-end applications. When talking about the perspective of development trend, the future of the control system is likely to be between industrial PC and PLC. And signs of these integrations have already appeared.

For a long period of time in the future, fieldbus technology, programmable logic controllers and industrial PCs will complement each other and promote each other. However, the advantages of industrial PCs will become more prominent. And the application range will rapidly expand to all industrial control systems.

As Internet technology penetrates into industrial control, the combination of control system and management system becomes inevitable, which makes the long-awaited goals of management and control integration, industrial enterprise informatization and network-based automation possible in the industrial automation industry.

The integration of management and control enable enterprises to choose the best solution that is truly in line with the new economic era. Thereby, it improves the production efficiency and enhances market competitiveness.

Therefore, the new direction of industrial control technology is to realize an open distributed intelligent system through Ethernet and Web technology. It provides modular, distributed, and reusable industrial control solutions based on the technical standards of Ethernet and TCP/IP protocols. The most important aspects are the development of network-based engineering industrial control and management software.

The construction of the integrated management and control system includes the integration of multiple systems and the integration of multiple technologies. In terms of multiple system integration, the first is the integration of multiple systems in the field control network, which includes three integration models. The integration of fieldbus control system FCS and DCS is important, that is, FCS implements the basic measurement and control loop. And DCS, as a higher-level management coordinator, implements complex advanced control and optimization functions.

The second thing is the integration of fieldbus control system FCS, DCS and PLC. That is, PLC and FCS are used to realize the basic measurement and control circuit in the case of complex logic interlocking. DCS, as a higher-level management coordinator, realizes complex advanced control and optimized function.

The third thing is the integration of multiple FCSs, solving the conversion problem of different communication protocols. It focuses on the interoperability of different fieldbus devices and the development of unified configuration, monitoring and software, so as to achieve seamless integration without losing or affecting each functionality and performance of stand-alone systems.

Let's talk about the integration of the management network and the control network. In future enterprise management, a large amount of data will come from the control network to build enterprise application software systems, including real-time databases, historical databases, data publishing, data mining, model calculations, process simulations, recipes design, operation optimization, parameter detection, deviation analysis and fault diagnosis, etc.

It can truly realize the integration of management and control by establishing various databases on the Internet/Web application network environment. It provides intelligent decision-making for control software downwards, and valuable data for management software upwards.

In terms of technology integration, it includes equipment interoperability technology, general data exchange technology, EtherNET and industrial Ethernet technology and other technology integration. The general data exchange technology includes DDE dynamic data exchange technology, NetDDE network dynamic exchange technology, ODBC open database interconnection technology, COM/DCOM component object model and OPC technology. The EtherNET+TCP/IP technology can realize the control parameters of the industrial site. The status of each network node is directly transmitted and shared in the enterprise information network. Thereby, it avoids the situation that PLC, DCS and FCS have multiple protocols and are difficult to integrate.