Programmable logic controller (PLC) is one of the primary building elements of industrial automation and the most important data source for industrial IoT (IIoT) applications. At the same time, PLC has been extremely conservative, due to the criticality of the control applications for the production process.
Digital transformation in the industry changed industrial PLCs to make them a part of IIoT. This development was supported by advancements in industrial hardware and software.Next to the conventional PLCs, vendors offer PLCs with modular structure, more storage capacity, one or several/spitted kernels to host control and IIoT applications, embedded security, and gateway functionality. With the development of edge computing, PLCs are not bound to a single device. PLC applications can be hosted on IPC, edge, or another industrial-grade device. Further advancements in virtualization technologies allow complete virtualization of the PLC, and it becomes a hardware-agnostic application that can be developed, tested, implemented, managed, maintained, and secured in accordance with advanced IT tools. This saves development, testing, implementation, and maintenance time and human effort. Via common interfaces or shared data and services, other applications can easily access the PLC and provide real-time insights or updates for control performance optimization or maintenance.