Industrial Control Systems for CIM

The integration of information and control functions in the sub-systems of a production system requires some kind of central coordination, an Industrial Control System, ICS. The choice of ICS for a given process, however, is a delicate one. The ICS should provide the required functionality and performance at a minimum cost, while providing sufficient long-term flexibility to assure a low life cycle cost. Today, it is not uncommon that a user chooses a too expensive or, even worse, too “restricted” ICS. In this study, a number of commercially available ICS's, normally used within different fields of application, have been investigated.