Market trends and business prospects

Comment by Sam Francis on July 15, 2020

Sometimes described as "the workhorse of industrial automation," a programmable logic controller or PLC is a computing device specifically designed for industrial operations.

A PLC can take many shapes and sizes, but in most cases, it doesn’t look like the traditional desktop computer you find in the office or at home—the PLC has no display, no hard drive, and no keyboard.

PLCs started in the automobile manufacturing industry, although they can now be found in almost all industries, and they tend to replace relays.

A relay is basically a device that turns a machine on and off. It is said that it is time-consuming and complicated compared to a PLC. When the relays need to be reconfigured, they also require more operational downtime. A research company estimates that PLC can reduce downtime from 20% to approximately 4%.

In addition, the panels of relay switches generally take up more space than programmable logic controllers, and they consume more power and generate more heat and smoke.

Although most of the time the programmable logic controller is about the same size and shape as a tablet, it has been extensively reinforced, which usually makes it look like the rough cousin of the iPad, who grew up in brutal neighborhoods and towns, and Already in a lot of fragments.

The "reinforcement" process means that the PLC is built with materials and components that are more wear-resistant, more durable, and capable of operating in what is sometimes described as a "harsh environment."

A harsh environment is generally understood as a place where there are strong vibrations, extreme temperatures, and dirty and dusty environments.

In other words, PLCs are usually connected to large industrial machines.

Generally speaking, PLC is used to control manufacturing processes, such as automated assembly lines and robotic processes.

Although we cannot understand the internal working principle of PLC too deeply, in a nutshell, they usually include a central processing unit (CPU) module, many input-output (I/O) devices, which are sometimes part of the CPU or in In other modules.

The CPU communicates with the I/O-usually in the same enclosure-to connect to the power supply and the machine running the PLC. Sometimes the CPU is some distance away from the I/O, and they are connected by twisted pair or fiber optic cables-Industrial Internet of Things, if you will, or IIoT.

The PLC can integrate digital and analog inputs and outputs.

Most PLCs are programmed using software applications running on traditional laptops or desktop computers. These applications communicate using Ethernet, USB, or some proprietary data communication system.

The specific conditions (language, process, functions, etc.) in this field are diverse, and manufacturers have not yet agreed on many standards. These standards will make PLC programming what you might call "open" or interoperable or compatible with the platform unrelated.

The American National Standards Institute introduced a standard-IEC 61131-3: 2013-a few years ago to encourage more cooperation, but this is a highly competitive industry that is currently growing significantly, so it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

According to Mordor Intelligence research, the PLC market in 2019 is worth nearly 4 billion U.S. dollars (Mordor said it is 3.89736 billion U.S. dollars).

It is expected to reach US$4.3 billion (US$4.29266 billion) by 2025, which is 3.7% higher than Mordor’s forecast for 2020-2025.

A large part of the growth is expected to come from the automobile manufacturing industry where PLC first appeared, and the industries that use industrial robots the most.

In terms of geographic area, Mordor estimates that due to the government’s increasing emphasis on manufacturing and increased investment in the mining and oil and gas industries, the growth in demand for PLCs in the United States may be the strongest.

As the United States and Canada are together as a region, Mordor said that PLC demand will "grow at high speed." Other countries that will grow rapidly include:

Mordor believes that Europe has medium growth prospects, partly because it is already an advanced industrial zone and is home to many of the world's largest manufacturing countries.

Just make a list

After reaching the limit of our knowledge of PLC technology, it is time to make a list of the top 20 PLC manufacturers found in our research.

But we should remind that although we are confident to list the top 20, we cannot say that the order of the top 20 is strictly scientific.

The criteria we use include sales volume, adoption rate, market share, awareness, online discoverability, etc.-no matter what we can find. In any case, journalism is more of an art than a science. That is our excuse.

Having said that, we have tried our best to highlight the essence of the main companies and their products, as well as some related details-at least some of them, we hope, you will find it useful.

If you have any suggestions or information that can strengthen this article, please feel free to send us an email and contribute your understanding of the basic technology of industrial automation.

So, this is the list below.

Top 20 programmable logic controller manufacturers

Some people estimate that Siemens is the clear leader in the PLC field. According to reports you believe, Siemens has approximately 30% to 40% of the market share. Although these estimates are based on the aggregate of the top 10 or so, it is said that their sales are much higher. More devices than all other devices added together.

As the largest engineering company in Europe, with a market value of nearly 124 billion U.S. dollars and an annual revenue of 60 billion U.S. dollars, the German giant Siemens stated that its SIMATIC series have controllers "suitable for all applications".

Rockwell Automation acquired Allen Bradley in 1985 for approximately $1.6 billion. This was a huge sum of money at the time, and it will also be a huge sum of money now. But Alan Bradley's value is because it is a long-established brand, founded in 1903, the same year as Rockwell.

In fact, these two American companies have been intertwined to some extent, and have followed the same path on the same path, becoming a joint unit now and one of the largest industrial automation companies in the world.

Its PLC products range from large to small "nano" systems. Its market capitalization is 25 billion U.S. dollars, and its annual revenue is approximately 7 billion U.S. dollars.

With a market value of approximately US$28 billion, Mitsubishi Electric is one of the larger business units in the huge corporate group of Mitsubishi Group, with a staggering 350,000 employees.

In 2017, Mitsubishi Electric's annual revenue was 37 billion U.S. dollars, which obviously exceeded the current market value, so there have been ups and downs.

Nevertheless, it is one of the largest PLC manufacturers, arguably the most extensive, and its Japanese headquarters is located in an area that is expected to grow rapidly.

It can be said that outside of the industrial field, it is not as famous as the others on this list, partly because it does not have any notable consumer products. Schneider Electric is still the leading supplier of PLC.

Modicon is one of Schneider Electric's brands and is believed to have produced the first PLC in the United States as early as 1968. Then, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, Schneider Electric emerged in 1999.

Today, Schneider Electric-a French company-has 135,000 employees, a market value of approximately 55 billion U.S. dollars, and annual revenues of more than 27 billion euros.

The Swiss-Swedish industrial giant has achieved amazing success in recent years, at least in terms of its talent for launching many new products-from what it describes as "the world's first real collaborative robot", the two-arm YuMi, its industrial objects Networking platform Ability.

Its $50 billion market value, $28 billion in annual revenue and 144,000 employees show that there is a lot of substance behind this style.

ABB is also one of the largest manufacturers of industrial robots in the world, so it offers a wide range of PLCs.

Honeywell Process is one of the business units of Honeywell International, which started operations in some form in 1906.

The parent company is headquartered in the United States, has 114,000 employees, annual revenues of nearly 42 billion U.S. dollars, and a market value of more than 103 billion U.S. dollars.

Honeywell considers itself a cutting-edge computing company and is currently competing with Google and IBM in the field of quantum computing.

The PLC currently provided by Honeywell Process is within the scope of its ControlEdge, and the name indicates that the company prioritizes edge computing over cloud computing, which may reassure industrial companies, many of which are paranoid about allowing any data beyond the scope of their facilities.

This Japanese company often launches hundreds of products at once and is an expert in PLC, although it offers a wide range of products, including industrial robots and sensors.

Omron's PLC series includes miniature and modular versions. All in all, it may have the most individual devices.

The company was founded in 1933, has nearly 40,000 employees, has a market value of approximately US$14 billion and annual revenues of more than US$8 billion.

Hitachi was once a world-famous one. At that time, we all carried a boom box on our shoulders, played Fight the Power loudly, and occasionally put it down to do some break dancing.

But now, Hitachi mainly confines itself to the industrial field, where it has developed many advanced computing technologies, although it still does a good job in smart TVs. Its PLC ranges from general-purpose PLCs to more professional and ultra-fast versions designed for factory engineering.

Hitachi is still a giant with a market value of 36 billion U.S. dollars, with more than 300,000 employees and an annual revenue of nearly 90 billion U.S. dollars. Please note that the coronavirus pandemic may be the reason why the current market value is significantly lower than its 2019 revenue.

Compared with some of the global giants on this list, IDEC is a small company with a market value of US$523 million and annual revenue of about US$500 million.

This Japanese PLC expert is a strong supporter of Ethernet as a network method, and its equipment can be accessed through a traditional browser.

This means that many IDEC customers use it for remote monitoring of machinery, and its MicroSmart Pentra PLC enables them to monitor status in real time, receive email alerts, and customize their own web pages.

10. One Belt One Road Industrial Automation

This relatively young Austrian company was founded in 1979 and has been operating very successfully throughout its history, with 190 offices in 68 countries.

Its annual revenue in 2016 was 620 million euros and the number of employees was 3,000. These are the last data available to B&R Industrial Automation as an independent company, as ABB acquired the company at an undisclosed price the following year.

B&R provides a variety of industrial automation products, including PLCs, which are said to have unique features, such as I/O "slicing" system design and "the highest degree of freedom in decentralized machine and system concepts."

Bosch is probably the most famous name on this list because it is one of the world's leading suppliers of home appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators.

The Bosch Automation Technology business unit merged with Mannesmann Rexroth in 2001. As a result, Bosch Rexroth has more than 33,000 employees and annual revenue of approximately 5.5 billion euros.

Its PLC series includes a Windows-based system that supports the Internet of Things with modular options, and has functions such as Ethernet-based real-time communication with the automation bus Sercos and synchronous motion control functions.

Founded in 1955, this Japanese company initially manufactured radios, but now focuses on industrial automation technologies such as PLC and other electronic control equipment as well as imaging and automotive systems.

Its Direct Logic brand PLC and other brands such as Kostac PLC go hand in hand, providing a relatively wide range of products to the market.

The market value of its parent company JTEKT is approximately US$2.7 billion. JTEKT is owned by Toyota.

The scope of this Taiwanese company's business is impressive. From industrial robots to intelligent buildings, most of them require PLCs to run smoothly.

Consistent with its diverse activities, it offers a wide variety of PLCs, including modular systems and "hot-pluggable" systems, which means they can be replaced without stopping the entire operation.

Its market value currently exceeds 16 billion U.S. dollars, has more than 83,000 employees, and has annual revenues of approximately 9 billion U.S. dollars.

Eaton is another well-known brand in the industrial field, established as early as 1911. Today, it has more than 100,000 employees and annual revenues of approximately $21 billion. Its market value is currently close to 37 billion U.S. dollars.

Eaton’s business units cover aerospace, automotive, and of course industrial sectors, the most famous of which may be hydraulics, clutches and transmission systems.

Eaton emphasizes the user-friendliness of its PLCs, the Easy PLC series, and the modular functions of XC and XN devices.

Another Japanese industrial automation expert Keyence is a merger of 16 organizations, all of which provide products in the same industry, from sensors and lasers to micrometers and microscopes.

In the PLC field, the company offers compact and modular types within its KV range.

The company has approximately 6,600 employees, annual revenue of nearly 5 billion U.S. dollars, and a market value of more than 100 million U.S. dollars.

LS Electric was spun off from the South Korean conglomerate LG Electronics. It has approximately 3,500 employees and annual sales revenue of approximately US$2 billion. Its market value is approximately US$1.4 billion.

The company offers a wide range of PLCs, of which LG Electronics may be its largest customer. Its scope includes a dedicated motion and positioning module.

Panasonic used to be a large consumer electronics company, but it was not so prominent in the desktop and mobile computing era.

It still performs well in the TV field and has a strong influence in the industrial field. It offers a wide range of PLCs, from entry-level and compact devices to high-performance modular and expandable versions.

The company has 270,000 employees and annual revenue of 75 billion U.S. dollars. Its market value exceeds 23 billion U.S. dollars.

Compared with its German compatriot company, Phoenix Contact is a small company with approximately 16,000 employees. But relatively few employees generate huge revenues of approximately 2.3 billion euros each year.

Many German companies in the industrial sector are private companies, and Phoenix Contact may be one of them, because we can't seem to find any listing of them on any stock exchange.

Considering its scale, its product range is very diverse and wide, and it provides different types of PLCs, some of which are dedicated to building infrastructure, others are conventional, and there is another type called PLCnext Control, which is designed for industrial automation operations. design.

Pilz, another relatively small or even smaller German company, focuses on industrial control systems, including PLCs.

It has 2,300 employees and generates annual revenue of 340 million euros through approximately 40 subsidiaries.

Pilz is another company that can be privately owned because we cannot find it on the stock exchange. It provides a series of beautiful "PSSuniversal" PLCs for "interconnected complex factories".

This seemingly privately-owned German company has annual sales of approximately US$1 billion and is a giant in the PLC market, even though it has a relatively small number of employees, only 8,500.

The company has developed many innovative technologies in different fields, and its PLC certainly looks different from those offered by other companies.

The PLCs provided by WAGO are often high-end customers because they are described as "achieving maximum performance in extreme environments."

Yokogawa Electric is another large Japanese industrial company specializing in electrical engineering and software, with 18,000 employees, annual revenue of 3.7 billion U.S. dollars, and a market value of approximately 4.3 billion U.S. dollars.

Interestingly, it seems that there is only one type of PLC, the FA-M3 series, which is described as "ultra-high-speed" and "stable".

It is still a household name, and although it is another Japanese company that cannot keep up with the desktop and mobile computer markets, Toshiba is still providing a wide range of technologies for the industrial sector, including robotics.

Toshiba mainly provides PLCs in the micro field, but says they can perform simple sequence control of large-scale processes and automation systems.

The company was founded in 1939 and currently has more than 140,000 employees, annual revenue of 35 billion U.S. dollars, and a market value of 15 billion U.S. dollars.

Submitted as follows: calculation, characteristics marked as: annual, automation, billion, cap, company, electrical, employment, industry, industrial computer, industrial computing equipment, market, people, plc, plc, programmable logic controller, programmable logic Controller, scope, revenue, department

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