I would like to know what management software/hardware are present in the typical manufacturing line. I mean for example, in a car automation what is the software that controls the manufacturing line (SAP?). How these software packages gets the data from the manufacturing line (PLCs, etc). I am intereted in any paper or book that treats those kinds of things.
Each manufacturing process has a variety of software. If You are interested in names You should browse the web.
About software and PLC , usualy software is distributed with IO hardware . So connecting PLC is pretty straightforward