DigiKey-eMag-Smart Manufacturing-Vol 17

production line for a car, but with his proposal, he can reduce that time to a month and a half. He describes it as a "black box" that you tell to do a task, and it gets it done. He says that his description was purposefully vague because he wanted to hurry up and finish writing it so he could go to sleep. Retro Electro bonus fact: In 1971, the IEC released IEC61131-3 for programmable logic controllers. This standard dictated the types of programming languages that could be used, formalizing ladder logic in the PLC world.

requirements list. They didn’t have any microprocessors (they didn’t exist yet), but 4700-series TTL logic ICs were starting to become widely available. Later in the year, he and his team of engineers and marketers, including Tom Boissevain, George Schwenk, Jonas Landau, Mike Greenberg, and Roland Hebert, completed Project 084, better known as the Modicon 084. The Modicon 084 is the first machine to bring real automation and process control to manufacturing. Using a proprietary programming

In the same year, Bedford Associates started a new company named Mo dicon, Modular Di gital Con troller, to market the new PLC. Soon after, the Modicon 184 was released to huge success.

The story after Modicon

Modicon continued for a handful of years before being purchased. It is tough to chase the lineage, but it eventually became part of the Schneider Electric ( https:// www.digikey.com/en/supplier- centers/schneider-electric) product catalog.

setup, this machine cut the automation setup time by as

much as 80%, allowing the factory to make even more high-quality products in that time.

In his proposal, he lists the problems with automation lines and simply claims to fix each one. That list of fixes essentially became the

Caption: Modicon 184

we get technical

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