he PLC was developed with several advantages over earlier designs. It tolerated the industrial environment better than computers and was more reliable, compact and required less maintenance than relay systems. It was easily extensible with additional I/O modules, while relay systems required complicated hardware changes in case of reconfiguration. This allowed for easier iteration over manufacturing process design. Comparing to a computer, PLC in a rack format can be more easily extended with additional I/O in the form of I/O cards. With simple programming language focused on logic and switching operations it was more user-friendly than computers using general-purpose programming languages