Manufacturer of production facilities and operating companies are subjected to increase competitive constraints. To be successful production facilities should work more productively and more environmentally friendly. Furthermore the quality of the produced goods should rise. To reach this manufacturer of production facilities ask for more efficient and intelligent automation technology. In the project “ScAut – Scientific Automation” the Beckhoff Automation GmbH – a producer and vendor of open automation systems based on PC Control technology – meets these requirements with Scientific Automation. Scientific Automation is the integration of automation software with findings from engineering science, which go beyond the limits of conventional control. The basis for this is the continually increasing performance of PCs. The power of the PC Control philosophy offers sufficient capacity to integrate numerous advanced functions beyond standard control. Scientific Automation complements the conventional areas of control technology such as PLC, Motion Control and control technology, for instance, with precise and fast measurement technology and the associated engineering algorithms.