The impact of industrial standards on product development

This paper describes how the increasing emergence of industrial standards and their enforcement, in particular through European Directives, impacts product development. Although the move towards standardisation is in general very desirable, the increasing difficulties faced by the equipment manufacturers will undoubtedly influence such factors as product cost, the number of suppliers who can still compete, the nature of supplier profiles etc. The IEC 1131 standard is used for the framework of discussion since it covers all aspects of the performance of an industrial controller. Several aspects, like EMC and safety, are now covered by European Directives and these are covered in some detail. Other aspects, like communications, lead to much broader considerations like fieldbus which is also dealt with. Programming language standardisation comes directly from the standard but overlaps with function block standardisation coming from other areas: this is also discussed.