Interfacing with Simatic S5 and S7 to control production processes

The Simatic(current version S7) developed by Siemens is used in very many companies to control the production process of their products. As the S5 did before it, the S7 has interfaces to enable data exchange with other computers and devices.
 

The S5 used a so called current loop interface to communicate with the outside world. The more modern S7 can communicate using either a Profi-Bus, an RS-422 serial interface or an Ethernet interfaces.
 

Kodak-Polychrome-Graphics has been using our system for over ten years now - exchanging data between various Simatics and an Oracle database - which in turn exchanges data with their central AS/400. Additionally, for quality control purposes, all products have a barcode printed on them, denoting the production time and machine for each production step.