PLC miniaturization, networking, PC-based, open direction
PLC manufacturers around the world about 200, the production of more than 300 kinds of products. The domestic PLC market is still dominated by foreign products, such as Siemens, Modicon, A-B, OMRON, Mitsubishi, GE products. After years of development, there are about 30 domestic PLC manufacturers, but they have not formed a considerable scale of production capacity and brand-name products, it can be said that PLC has not yet formed manufacturing industrialization in China. In terms of PLC applications, China is very active, and the application industry is also very wide. Experts estimated that the domestic market sales of PLC in 2000 was 150,000 to 200,000 sets (of which imports accounted for about 90%), about 2.5 to 3.5 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of about 12%. It is expected that by 2005, the national PLC demand will reach about 250,000 sets, about 3.5 to 4.5 billion yuan.
The PLC market also reflects the situation of the world's manufacturing industry, which declined sharply after 2000. However, according to the forecast of Automation Research Corp, despite the global economic downturn, the PLC market will recover, it is estimated that the global PLC market in 2000 was 7.6 billion US dollars, by the end of 2005 will return to 7.6 billion US dollars, and continue to grow slightly.
Miniaturization, networking, PC and openness are the main development direction of PLC in the future. In the early days of PLC-based automation, PLCS were large and expensive. In recent years, however, micro-plc (less than 32 I/O) have emerged for only a few hundred euros. With the further improvement and development of Soft PLC control configuration software, the market share of installed soft PLC configuration software and PC-based control will gradually increase.
At present, one of the biggest development trends in the field of process control is the expansion of Ethernet technology, and PLC is no exception. Today, more and more PLC suppliers begin to provide Ethernet interfaces. It can be believed that PLC will continue to shift to the direction of open control systems, especially industrial PC-based control systems.