China is in the midst of a developmental stage where advanced management knowledge and techniques and advanced industrial automation technology and solutions are fundamental and necessary elements for China's sustained growth and global competitiveness. There is no one good definition of what industrial automation is. Perhaps the best definition is a simple one: industrial automation is the use of electronics to control and monitor a process or machinery. While there are many steps that China must take to ensure the appropriate development of its industrial base and supporting infrastructure, the utilization of advanced industrial automation is a critical step. Increases in productivity and efficiency are not possible without a high level of industrial automation. If we were to look at the growth in productivity of U.S. industry from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, two pivotal factors stand out. The first is a revolution in management techniques and consequent restructuring of the American corporation. Management became results-focused, flatter and more distributed, with great participation by the work force. The second pivotal factor was the infusion of advanced industrial automation into manufacturing and other automated processes. Together these two elements led to significant increases in productivity and efficiency. These increases led the way to sustained growth in the U.S. economy, so that by the late 1980s and the early 1990s the U.S. economy was growing faster than that of Japan for the first time in several decades. China, which is now at its own critical industrial and management systems crossroads, can borrow from some of these experiences. China has an unparalleled opportunity to adopt advanced industrial automation as this technology moves into the new millennium and into the information era. The future of industrial automation will be a networked future with a great reliance on wireless connectivity. Utilization of effective and open networks such as DeviceNet, ControlNet and Ethernet/IP, with their ability to connect to the Internet, allows for continuous control and feedback from the factory floor to the management office and beyond. The factory floor and the management office can be linked continuously and in real time with suppliers, sales force and customers. Every part of this chain will be able to monitor, input to and adjust the manufacturing process and supporting activities. The future of industrial automation will also very much be linked to software that is an open platform. and is multifunctional. The right software package provides tremendous flexibility and agility in the manufacturing process. Industrial software provides the operator interface and gateway from the factory floor to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and even to the Internet to provide seamless flow of data and information so that the 'Information Enabled Enterprise' can be managed in a more flexible, integrated, and efficient manner.