| It definitely would. RoboDK is one product that is moving in the right direction. In the PLC space, Beckhoff controllers using commodity x86/64 hardware and standardized IEC 61131 programming languages are gobbling up Rockwell and Siemens' market share. Given they're perpetually about 20 years behind the times, perhaps this year someone at Fanuc, ABB, Kuka, and Yaskawa will catch up to the year 2002 and read Spolsky's admonition [1] that says: > Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements. Stop trying to turn every division of your company into its own product center. I loathe paying $800/year to Rockwell for the privilege of reading "update your firmware" (and subsequently bricking my controller as an unwilling beta tester) on TechConnect. They're a PLC vendor, they should focus on selling PLC hardware, not making their customers hate them by nickel-and-diming them for software licenses and support contracts. They were down for FOUR DAYS this weekend for planned maintenance. FOUR DAYS! Likewise, Fanuc should focus on selling servos and castings - robotic manipulator hardware - and stop trying to get the training division to turn a profit. If, instead of a 40 hour course costing $2,000, it was free, there would be more people able to use their $40,000 robot arms! If Roboguide software was free instead of $2,650, clients could more efficiently build more robot cells, and sell more yellow paint! Gah! [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ |
A very brief search turned up assorted overviews[1][2][3], and a github topic[4]. The PLCopen standard[5] is paywalled - only $400 single user, with low low per-seat multipliers! :/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61131-3 [2] https://dc-us.resource.bosch.com/media/us/products_13/produc... [3] https://www.controleng.com/articles/which-iec-61131-3-progra... [4] https://github.com/topics/iec61131-3 [5] https://plcopen.org/iec-61131-3