How to Teach Digital Tools for Process Automation in Industrial Engineering Education

Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) have become the industry standard and have replaced hard-wired electrical devices used to control production equipment. With its advanced use, the PLC is increasingly becoming an important part of engineering. Therefore, it is essential to effectively teach students how PLCs work and how to program them through practical exercises. The goal of this paper is to present a training set used to program a PLC that fulfills the needs of industrial engineering students. The training set presented here allows students to learn about different industrial applications of PLCs, and to program such PLCs themselves.