■ Scan Time of the Programmable Controller
• The process of input update, program execution, and output update is referred to as a scan and the process
repeated over and over in the same manner is referred to as the cyclic execution method.
• In the cyclic execution method, since the process of input update is performed immediately after the output
update, the process of input update and output update is sometimes called I/O update for the purpose of
simplification.
• In addition to program execution and I/O update, the programmable controller also performs a variety of error
checking (self-diagnostic function) and also communicates with the programming tools. These operations are
referred to, as a whole, as tool services and are performed after program execution.
• Since the scan time is defined as the time required for one scan, the cyclic operation of a scan (I/O update,
program execution, and tool service) can be shown below.