ABSTRACT
Most likely somebody somewhere in a company needs to justify the expense of
purchasing a standard available machine or committing to the creation of a
custom piece of automation. They may be the company CEO, the project
manager and their boss, or some overworked bean counter in the back room.
Often it may involve many if not all of them. Related to this need, the
automation machine builder needs to make a profit to survive. There may be
purchasing departments and sales forces involved with competitive pricing press-
ures pushing from every direction. How does this all fit together, and what are
the different operational modes with which automation builders tend to align
themselves? And who owns the intellectual property, and is getting a patent
worth the effort?
