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Peter H.Schäfer from A&D Newsletter

interviewed Hans Beckhoff on the subject of Industrial PC

Applications will define theIndustrial PC of the future

Quantum leaps are achieved thanks to the Beckhoff innovative and open ap-proach to Ethernet.Simplicity is achieved by using the Ethernet port on a stan-dard motherboard and nothing more.Furthermore,the standard motherboard canbe smaller and low cost since no additional slots are required for expensive field-bus cards.Smaller motherboards due to advances like EtherCAT are an exampleof how changing technologies are changing Industrial PCs.Peter H.Schäfer fromA&D Newsletter asked Hans Beckhoff what the Industrial PC of the future willlook like and what will be the important features.

Where does the Industrial PC sit within your company strategy?

Hans Beckhoff:We present ourselves on the market with a three-pronged strat-egy.On the one hand we are clearly positioned as an automation business andrefer to Beckhoff as “The Automation Company”.The Industrial PC plays an im-portant role as part of our PC Control philosophy,because it represents the cen-tral processing unit for the control technology.The focus is clearly on automation.In the second part of our strategy,Beckhoff is “The I/O Company”.We see a glob-al independent market for I/O components,in which we act as specialists forthese products.Last,but not least,this standard also applies to Beckhoff as “TheIPC Company”.In this segment we position ourselves as an Industrial PC com-pany,acting as a competent contact for application-specific tasks for customersfrom all sectors of industry,ranging from mechanical engineering – our classicclientele – to process technology,building automation,metrology and even med-ical engineering – Industrial PCs are used everywhere.In view of all these options,we are establishing ourselves as a supplier both of standard solutions and of so-lutions that are tailored to particular industry sectors.

Hans Beckhoff:“Industrial PCs have a big future.This is becausethese PCs can be adjusted to different applications and accuratelytuned to different requirements.Also,there is further scope for down-scaling of PC technology,so that it will increasinglycompete with classic embedded microprocessor technologies.”

What is the significance of customer-specific control applications?

Beckhoff:Half of our IPCs and Control Panels are customer-specific,i.e.they areequipped with special front panels,additional keys and other customized,user-specific features.