Peng Yu: Shanghai Industrial Automation Instrumentation Research Institute, plcopen China organization
Lin Xueping: Founder of Nanshan Industrial College, General Manager of Beijing Lianxun Power Consulting Company
Solid, simple and reliable, this is the whole essence of the automation control system. The foundation of intelligent manufacturing has not left this point, and the programmable controller plc is a legendary product evergreen.
With the driving force of GM's production line, Modicon Modicon Company in the United States took the lead in manufacturing the first programmable controller PLC in 1969. This is an epoch-making product, which is a sign that Industry 3.0 is starting to start if according to German Industry 4.0. If you take mo-di-con apart to see, it is still very exquisite, it represents the meaning of "modular modular - digital digital - control control" three words. This is really a classic idea, and fifty years later, today's automation field does not seem to have left this circle.
This simple deployment, relatively low-cost controller has since become popular on machine lines. The global automation community is rolling up. From the 70s onwards, especially in the 80s, there was a big development of the PLC brand everywhere. In Japan, it is the era of mechanical development, and the integration of machinery and electronics has quickly become an opportunity for the rise of automation in Japan. Japan Fuji, Omron, Hitachi, Yaskawa, Toshiba all have PLCs, like Yaskawa is to buy a modicon license. In the United States, in addition to modicon, there are squared, Ryan reliance, ab, etc. France's tetralemachanique's plc is also good, and it can still be seen on the big crane of hong Kong Machinery. The newly opened frontier is full of hot land, full of paradise for newcomers. Siemens also went to the stage of plc control system at this time.
From 1980 to 1990, it was a decade when PLC showed its cards, technical know-how became no longer mysterious, and the management of entrepreneurs began to threaten. There was no righteous war in the Spring and Autumn Period, and the period of incorporation began. The poorly run modicon also began to fall prey to a German company and, after a turn, sold to Schneider. The French te was also acquired by Schneider. Rockwell, on the other hand, acquired the century-old store ab in 1985 and Ryan Electric in 1995, and has since gained a firm foothold in the field of automation control. So far, the four earliest PLC companies in the United States have all been acquired.
In Japan, where the internal volume is also very strong in the automation market, Mitsubishi Electric stands out. Around 1985, according to a report by market research firm f&s, Mitsubishi Electric was about the same as Omron in the Japanese market, more than 20%. However, by the end of the 1980s, the Japanese market was already 50% exclusive to Mitsubishi. It only leaves a smaller and smaller market for peers such as Omron, Fujifilm, and the sensor-invincible Keans.
By the 1995s, the repeated reshuffling of the PLC market basically showed a clear trend. After the pioneer Molicon was acquired by Schneidi Electric in 1996, the history of PLC development basically entered a period of calm. The role of the automated control system is like a performance that cannot be left for a long time, and the role on the stage is longer than the audience.
On such a stage, Siemens, Rockwell, Mitsubishi Electric, etc., are basically the head position of the plc in the international market for a long time. This is supported by comprehensive technical strength, quality assurance system, and user cultivation strategy.
Figure Global PLC Market (Source: ARC Consulting Company, USA)
Time back to 1983. Germany's Erlangen Siemens PLC manufacturing plant, at that time only do medium and large PLC S5 series, and rarely sold to the outside world, most of them are their own engineering supporting. The most impressive thing is that the design and developer of PLC is only a dozen people, while there are more than thirty people in the department of pipe manufacturing process and quality control, and most of them are Doctors, which is twice as strong as the former. In this regard alone, no domestic automated manufacturing enterprise can compare. The strongest technology in domestic enterprises must be the development and design department, and the process and quality department must follow.
In the 1990s, if you visited Mitsubishi Electric in Japan, you can't miss the Himeji Factory, which specializes in the small plc fx series. A small workshop undertook the production of various modules for the entire fx series. The production schedule is in half an hour, and the varieties and quantities produced are listed on the kanban board, and the number of five or six varieties and hundreds of units in each batch is remembered. Surprisingly, the components achieved zero inventory. The components needed for each batch of production products are delivered by logistics truck half an hour ago and packed in yellow plastic boxes. In addition to the aging of components after loading and the whole machine off the line, the production line is fully automatic, and no one intervenes in the welding of the printing plate and even the assembly of the whole machine. This mode of production is still difficult to achieve in China. There is a company that produces plc in Shenzhen, and in order to avoid the disconnection of key components, it takes half a year's inventory. For plc, a product with a high cost, inventory is not only sinful, but also fatal.
The user habits of plc are a huge moat for a brand. Many school students are used to a certain brand of plc, and when they go to the society, they often subconsciously recommend factory use.
The way Siemens cultivates plc users is evident. It often provides plc laboratories to many engineering universities at a very low cost, so that many universities open plc classes to teach according to the model. It can be said that these plCs are full of laboratories of engineering universities and higher vocational colleges. In the university classroom, few people will seriously teach the underlying general knowledge content of the PLC control standard (such as the IEC 61131-3 standard specification, etc.), and only teach the use of brand PLC. This has plunged the education of college students into a strange circle of only knowing the appearance and not being able to explore the underlying basic principles. This is a very common phenomenon at present.
The same is true in the field of industrial software. The school is keen to teach the use of foreign software, and students make beautiful charts with the support of tools. Matlab software, almost a must-have software for college science students, makes it easy to draw all kinds of simulations. However, this kind of software will also obscure the bottom-level principle inference, cut off college students' thinking about the origin of physics, and block the innovation loop. Some people of insight simply do not allow students to use matlab in their graduate papers, starting with the most basic mathematical company such as the Fourier transform. Opening up people's minds is the most important way to educate people in science and engineering in universities.
Siemens will also spend a lot of money to support publishing institutions and publish a large number of textbooks on the use of Siemens PLCs. He has even trained and supported many famous professors, and written many best-selling textbooks such as Siemens PLC and Human Interface HMI. It is said that some books have sold 200,000 to 300,000 copies. This gives these plCs a huge beginner base. At the same time, the "Siemens Cup" China Intelligent Manufacturing Challenge, which has been participated by thousands of colleges and universities, has entered the fifteenth session, and is also officially recognized by the Ministry of Education.
At the meeting held by the Steering Committee of Automation Teaching of the Ministry of Education, many people are also very interested in the general education of PLC. But no one seems to be able to change that, and few universities can do so.
This is not an isolated case of Siemens. The layout of the laboratories and training materials of Mitsubishi and Rockwell at the graduate school is the same routine. What university would reject the hardware, software and supporting teaching books offered by the company? And the most direct result it brings is that graduates of various disciplines and technical schools will become super fans and fans of these PLC brands. If the PLC users in the factory decide what kind of brand to buy, then the laboratory in the university is brand education, and the training materials are the first procurement guide.
Of course, this method seems to be beyond reproach. This should be part of the joint efforts of education and business to promote student skills development. For the factory, such a skilled graduate is also welcome. This is a need for a market presence. However, the cognition and skill cultivation of vocational high schools in colleges and universities will form a mechanism of gradual fermentation. University educators only see a piece of dough from the front end, and the real bread business is a market that the professors have not seen.
Ge's plc is the ascetic who catches up in the American plc industry, the cultivation is very bitter, and the Tao is very poor. The market share in China is also not large. In the history of GE automation, there have been three large-scale operations intended to reverse the backwardness in the control system.
As early as 1993, when Welch first took office, the new officials had three fires, and the first fire was directed at the factory with a unified control system. At that time, it had a joint venture with the Japanese CNC system boss Fanuc, and had a good advantage in machine tool control. Named "Factory of the Future", this one uses a single control system to integrate the control systems of all machines. At that time, the numerical control system was still in its infancy, and the machine interface was even more varied. This high-profile operation failed at a cost of $1 billion. In the pursuit of automation on the battlefield, Ge planted a big heel. This technical failure, but a small tactical flaw, drowned in Welch's legendary management story. Ge's plc continues to remain in decline. No one wants to mention this, ge control system on the way forward, there are bigger pits, waiting for the person to erase the memory to fall into.
In 2001, the American automation consulting company Arc proposed pac (programmable automation control system), which is a hybrid of PLC-based control and PC-based control. It is intended to be controlled by open automation, which combines the characteristics of simple and low cost of PLC programming and the powerful computing power of PC-based. The concept of pac, which received a positive response from ge fanuc, released the corresponding product in 2003. However, there seems to be a lack of ge that controls genes and still can't change the face through pac. In fact, machine control requires a high degree of reliability and cannot be achieved directly with PC technology. Intel chips in the industrial environment, the performance of weak explosion, heat dissipation problems need to be specially solved. There is a lot of work to be done to adapt the chip transformation results to the module of the plc structure. This is not a specialty. In terms of software, pac is not object-oriented and modelable, so it is more like a gimmick. With the weakness of the flag bearer ge, the pac concept is also like a gust of wind blowing past, the market is still the world of PLC, but the PLC structure based on PC control has begun to show stubborn vitality.
In 2016, Ge and Fanuc quietly broke up. In this three-decade marriage, both parties have their own family property, Fanuc retains the global business in the field of numerical control, while General Electric continues to retain the global business of software, embedded systems and control systems, plus the acquisition of Alstom the previous year also inherited a part of the automation business, now collectively known as the intelligent platform ge-IP. The result of this joint venture is regarded as a classic case of Japanese manufacturing rubbing the thighs of the United States. The U.S.-Japan joint venture has not failed, and basically ended with Japan winning, whether it is in machine tools, semiconductors, and even automobiles. In these thirty years, Japanese fanuc has become the king of the global cnc system from an unknown CNC system, which only Siemens can match. Ge successfully made its own channel into an infusion tube, and Fanuc took the opportunity to spread to the entire North American market. Ge is still facing the PLC market that has not been able to be done for many years.
At this point, Ge probably didn't realize that this was another failure, because it had a bigger picture unfolding: the Industrial Internet. GE has resolutely moved towards the digital route. This time it's the predix industrial Internet platform. Heroes create momentum, arms up and shout, the world machine, in this union. This time, it is industrial software that plays the front, and the way of thinking is a unified control platform. However, it should be said that the revitalization of this control system has chosen a bad opportunity, first of all, the global energy environment has undergone tremendous changes, and ge's investment in this area has suffered huge losses; secondly, there are many financial trust issues that have been thunderous. Importantly, the industrial Internet quickly began to fade, proving itself unreliable to burn money alone. For industries that need strong support, it's just a baby's calf.
In 2018, ge's digital strategy was seriously disrupted due to the impact of the overall product line on the impact of the general environment. Ge had to sell the entire GE-IP intelligent platform to Emerson, an automation giant in the process industry, for a low price of $2.2 billion, which has been trying to make a difference in the hybrid process industry.
Three attempts to unify the machine's failures made Ge should be completely cool. But ge-ip should be thankful for Emerson's ambitions, otherwise the $200 million automation business would have been difficult to sell at 10 times the price at the time. However, the baggage is still a burden after all, taking over the plc that has been depressed for many years, and Emerson has not made much progress in the past three years.
According to the estimates of Mir Rui Industrial Consulting, the Chinese PLC market is about 13 billion yuan in size. The main position of PLC lies in the machinery and equipment manufacturing market, accounting for about 70%. The rest are distributed in various engineering projects. Siemens accounts for about 40% of the domestic market with a broad spectrum of products covering small to large, while Omron, Mitsubishi Electric, Rockwell and Schneider are behind. Each positioning is different, Rockwell, basically abandon the small PLC, focus on the medium PLC. The Japanese have a big say in the small plc market.
In the cracks of traditional PLC manufacturers, if the performance is outstanding, there are the pc-based controls of the niche German Bever and the Austrian B&R (which has been acquired by ABB), which have grabbed a piece of living space. They basically cut from the high-end market and take the route of low-cost high-end market.
This is a different kind of plc simple graphics programming path. Bevers adopts the strategy of simultaneous development of control and software, and combines powerful communication protocols and software/systems engineering methods to achieve breakthroughs in local areas. In mid-to-high-end applications, the price is cheaper than Siemens and it is very flexible. It fully demonstrates the flexibility and development of PCs in software engineering. Bevers also supports the in-depth customization needs of third-party manufacturers by providing software development kits. In this regard, those leading PLC manufacturers are basically not open to the outside world.
Considering that plc is in the situation of low cost and user habits becoming a natural barrier, plc with too low operating profit is not a good choice. For most industrial manufacturers, it is wise to sell plc. This is the same reason why it is difficult for large enterprises to develop large-scale self-developed industrial software, and the economy is often very poor.
Both Bevers and B&R are aware of the cost problem early, so they invariably adopt the same strategy, that is, they attach great importance to the development of special functional modules in sub-sectors.
Schneider Electric, on the other hand, has become more aggressive in recent years. In the open automation system initiated by the United States, Schneider Electric has been extremely active. As an open environment programming language 61499, it has become a new wave in the automation community, and its model-based programming ideas have made it possible to decouple software and hardware - which will break the lengthy debugging switch formed when the production line is changed. Schneider seems to be fully embracing this new automation specification, and after integrating the PLC products of the old modicon and te, it has used unity pro software as a unified platform for the future mid-to-high-end PLC.
Made in China has always been known for its low cost. This sounds like saying that where it is manufactured at low cost, China is invincible. However, this is not the case. In the field of automation, the programmable controller plc has always been a stable evergreen product with its simple programming and low cost. But in this field, Chinese PLC manufacturers, have not yet formed a decisive force.
The good news is that there were many challengers during this period. With the accumulation of helishi and Zhejiang University Central Control in the process automation control market earlier, coupled with Nanda Aotuo, there are also some breakthroughs in the field of large-scale PLC. But in the plc of discrete manufacturing, it has not yet formed a real challenge. At present, it seems that Shenzhen Huichuan and Wuxi Xinjie have already performed well. However, according to the report of Zhiyan Consulting, in 2019, the combined market share of the two is only 5% of the entire domestic brand.
Huichuan, known as Little Huawei, is actively breaking through the PLC field. In 2020, Huichuan's revenue is less than 12 billion, but the current market value is close to 200 billion. It's an amazing premium. So can Huichuan kill a blood road in the plc field?
From the perspective of the existing path, the ideas of Germany's Beatitudes and Austria's B&R are a breakthrough in high-end work. The remaining two roads, whether it is to do process supporting, or hardware cost shopping, are relatively narrow roads.
As far as the low-end control system is concerned, each automation manufacturer will have its own hardware. For example, in enterprises such as Helishi and Zhongkong, the engineering projects are still very heavy. To feed a large engineering implementation team, continuing to scramble for control systems is a must.
Huichuan has the motivation in this regard, and it has to fight for its own servo and frequency converter. At present, Huichuan's products are still too scattered, and there are too many small princes, but they still lack a strong adhesive that can integrate different drives, servo products, and control systems. The best way, of course, is the software platform. Just like Siemens' strategy, we use TIABotu to connect the individual products together. Schneider Electric also makes good use of the platform power of eco sturxture, integrating all frequency converters, PLCs, human-machine interfaces and even low-voltage electrical.
In fact, behind the PLC hardware, there is a silent sharp knife: that is, the software programming platform.
It's a small market. The vast majority of the 61131-3 programming platform that can conform to the open PLC is left to 3s' codesys, and another relatively unknown party echelon, Infoteam. As a third-party plc programming software, codesys is the hidden one for control systems. Like Befu and Schneider Electric, they all have the shadow of codesys. Phoenix, known for its electrical connections, acquired another KW programming platform, which is the basis for Mitsubishi PLC's secondary development. Rockwell, on the other hand, spent a lot of effort developing its own programming platform. It can be said that in the automation circle, Rockwell, which seems to be a little thin (2020 revenue of $6.3 billion), is the company that pays the most attention to self-balancing. In order to avoid the mergers and acquisitions of various popular automation giants, Rockwell has done his best to form various alliances externally. Internally, much attention is being paid to strengthening the investment of the software sector.
In fact, what makes Huichuan most uncomfortable is that it is also sitting in the chair of codesys. The Taishi chair, or the tiger chair, only Huichuan himself knows, but it seems that it is also going to say goodbye to this situation like a needle felt. However, to completely get rid of the codesys programming environment, it is still a long way to go, and there is no starlight.
With the complexity of industrial sites and harsh environments – where oil and gas seem to deter white-collar IT staff , automation vendors have shown that it can continue to shine in the waves of digital manufacturing. And plc, a half-centurion, straightened his waist even more energetically. The Internet of Things, industrial software has made it stronger, further establishing its central position in the field of automation. If it cannot enter the field of control, the industrial Internet will not enter the main battlefield. PLC is one such benchmark. Believers on all sides have plenty of reasons to continue to attack its territory.
Thanks to Ding Yan of Heli Shi, Zhang Haiwei of Aotes, and Zhou Zhou of ZhiDi for their strong support.