Teaching programmable logic controllers: a hands-on and skill-building approach

Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) are essential in process automation and production technology. Hence, educating students about PLCs and their usage is crucial to prepare skilled workers in relevant engineering fields. This paper proposes a multidisciplinary teaching approach combining technical and business perspectives in using PLCs. Besides such ‘hard skills,’ we encourage the students to become creative and learn to collaborate. We describe how our course is structured and how company visits are integrated. A student evaluation of our course is given and discussed. In general, the evaluation supports our approach.