IEC 61131-3 - changing the world of industrial automation

In its nearly ten years of existence, PLCopen has done a tremendous job on the IEC 61131-3 programming standard. It has been accepted by a much broader platform as originally intended: it certainly conquered the ´classical´ PLC area, and in addition it created the basis for SoftPLCs and entered the world of drives and even distributed control with small intelligent nodes. This paper gives an overview of the benefits of the standard, the structuring tools, and solutions for new areas like motion control and mechatronics solutions.