The Exhilarating Journey from Industrial Electronics to Industrial Informatics

Abstract

F WE HAD a look at the industrial developments that took place in the 20th century, the first half could be said to be hardware dominated in the sense that the improvements in productivity and product quality were mostly due to improvements in “the hardware.” The operational speed and the accuracy of the industrial machinery steadily increased, mostly due to the improvements in the precision of the mechanical parts. Along the same lines, the early second half could be said to be software dominated. It was the software used in microprocessor based control systems that enabled a production line to operate faster and more accurately. Even the improvements in industrial machinery (the hardware) were due to the possibilities offered by Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing. The era of industrial electronics got started around this period, industrial automation in the form of mechanical controls and switches, slowly giving way to electronic controls and signal processing. The last few decades of the century, on the other hand, are characterized by the fusion of different technologies, the first example of which may be (going back almost to the start of the century) electromechanics, then optoelectronics, then mechatronics, then telematics, then bioinformatics, and so on. As a result of this, the boundaries between industrial sectors and academic disciplines have eroded very rapidly. In the new millenium, it is very difficult to put clear boundaries between industrial sectors, between products and services, between producers and users, between IT, communications, media, consumer electronics and even between IT and non-IT industries. The area of industrial automation and control has had its share of the changes too. It is easy to see how dominant IT has become in industrial