Software used in industrial automation can mean different things to different people, depending where you stand in the industrial automation environment.
What comes to mind to me as an industrial automation sales professional is customer relations management software. For this specific niche, special software needs to be created, preferably by field-workers whom know the in and out of sales of investment goods, like industrial automation goods and services. Such a customized software package is Selltis Sales. It's a resource that automates your sales force.
A second type of software used is manufacturing software. Enabling optimized production processes, for example cutting cloth by women or robots in the textile industry. Making sure that as much as possible of each piece of cloth is being cut, to make for example t-shirts.
Next we have process control software. The standard IEC 61131-3 programming system is what comes to mind, wide spread in Europe and rapidly gaining success in the United States of America.Providing engineers with a tool to rapidly develop process control software, for a wide variety of industries.
Microsoft's windows xp embedded is now being used, as the operating system, to run on decentralised PLC's, making it possible to have software PLC's directly on machine's.
For minimalistic embedded systems Windows CE is the operating system of choice.With the kernel running in under one megabyte.
And finally real time ethernet is a software protocol that is rapidly gaining popularity in the industrial environment since there is a tendency to use it as the standard open protocol in industrial automation. But only the future will tell us, if this will really be the case.
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