Revolutionising Sensor Based Automation in Manufacturing

The implementation of Web serviceenabled sensors and actuators on production lines will permanently change the way in which future automation systems are designed and implemented. Current interfaces to automation components are largely vendor-specific, restricting the reconfiguration of lines and the management of line data across enterprises. Outside the automation domain, enterprise system development has seen real-time data linkage take great steps in the office, warehouse and supply chain. Research into the use of Web-service-enabled sensors and actuators has the potential to present an open standards-based method to integrate production lines into this enterprise computing model, an innovation that will revolutionize automation in future manufacturing plants and remove control from vendors back to users.