What PLC brands are popular in China?

[Ivan Seeking]

Does anyone know or have a reference indicating what PLC [programmable logic controller] brands are popular in China?

 

[FredGarvin]

Good luck finding that one out. I would venture a guess that because so many foreign countries set up factories over there that the usual suspects probably have foothold over there as well. I'll ask my electrical cohorts if they have heard anything on the topic.

 

[berkeman]

I can ask one of our FAEs in China that question if you like. My company makes control networking solutions that compete with traditional PLCs, and our business is growing quite a bit in China.

What applications are you interested in for the PLC question? Is it mainly for factory automation (if so, what kinds of factories), or some other type of automation?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Thanks guys.

Aviation manufacturing.

Berkeman, are you offering what was being called soft PLCs?

 

[berkeman]

Berkeman, are you offering what was being called soft PLCs?

I'm not sure if that term is applicable to Echelon's LonWorks control networks. They are peer-to-peer, CSMA networks, as opposed to the traditional master-slave PLCs. LonWorks networks are very popular in building control networking, for example. We have a new network technology called Pyxos FT (hey, I didn't make up the name, okay?), which uses TDMA and a master-slave architecture to achieve the determinism and high throughput of more traditional PLCs.

I'll ping our FAE in China with your question. Give me a day or two to get the feedback for you.

 

[berkeman]

Turns out this is New Year's week in China, and most places are closed. Our FAE got back to me that she needs to ask around a bit, and won't be able to contact people until next week. I'll let you know what she finds out.

 

[berkeman]

Hi Ivan, Here is the reply that I just got from our Asian FAE:

It seems that person wants to know the brands of PLCs being used in China. Actually I’m a member of TC124, a technical committee that handles standardization of fieldbus technologies. I review documents passed along in the committee. Popular technologies are Profibus (Profinet), Modbus, ControlNet, Interbus and etc. For the PLC brand, I believe most popular ones are Siemen’s or Controlnet (Rockwell), then it goes to Japanese maker Omron. Since the aviation industry is mission critical, I doubted that Omron plays a role there as Chinese are more likely and willingly to pay for the top brand - we want to use the best. Siemens and Rockwell are certainly the top brands in the industry.

Hope that helps!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Hope that helps!

Yes indeed! I couldn't ask for more.

Thanks.

It is interesting that we don't see Mitsubishi on the list.