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Merging controls and IT

A recent conversation with an engineer at a major beverage company suggests that there may be considerable potential in merging controls engineers with IT professionals.

He put it this way:

“If we’re feeding two Ethernet cables to a case packer—one for peer-to-peer communication and one for MES—traditionally, the controls engineer would design and construct the peer-to-peer network and the IT guy would do the MES. But if you stop and think about that, you have to ask yourself what are the chances of two completely different departments designing solutions that look anything like each other. In addition, when it comes time to install the cables, which lie right next to each other, why not have the same person design both and have the same contractor install, terminate, test, and go live?”

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