Industrial automation is linked to manufacturing and production,
but the term has been used more loosely recently. According to
Bjoern Falke,  senior product marketing specialist for the
Automation Group at Phoenix Contact, “Automation is a technology
to increase production flexibility and reduce cost of ownership
of a manufacturing process or facility.”  As the indu-strial
automation industry adapts to changing technology, Falke said
that even the definition has evolved.  “Additions include the
need for further data exchange capabilities driven by ever-
increasing networking of production cells and increased data
volume,” he said. “Technologies, such as vision systems or
sophisticated data-logging requirements, increase data volume
that needs to be collected and pushed over a network to other
parts of the machine or factory.  “Collected data can be used to
better analyze and streamline production processes, improve
product quality, provide better diagnostics to increase machine
uptime and make the production