A cost-effective approach for the development of an integrated PC-PLC-robot system for industrial engineering education

Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) instruction is and is likely to rem ain an important component of the industrial engineering education curricul um. As new manufacturing technologies become available and as existing manu facturing technologies become more integrated, industrial engineering depar tments must continuously develop their laboratory resources in order to pro vide their students with effective instruction. While financially limited d epartments cannot acquire state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment, they ca n provide improved hands-on AMT integration instruction without major capit al investment, By developing an interface box between existing LabVolt PLC trainers and Microbot TeachMover robots, the industrial engineering departm ent at a major northeastern university was able to provide its students wit h improved AMT integration instruction.