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The European programmable logic controllers (PLC) market witnessed a heavy decline in growth in 2009, owing to the recession of 2008. However, it made a strong recovery in 2010 with all major market participants in Europe experiencing high growth.

The sovereign debt crisis afflicting the Eurozone will determine the future prospects of the European PLC market. In the meantime, however, the market is likely to grow steadily over the forecast period aided by the emergence of major Eastern European economies as manufacturing hubs for the rest of Europe. The EU PLC market will add over €1B in revenues, reaching €2.6B in 2017 from its 2010 €1.6B base.

The research firm Frost & Sullivan explains their enthusiasm:. “The global economic crisis and the sovereign debt crisis of Europe have created an atmosphere of uncertainty, with fewer projects expected in the next 2 years,” begins company representative Karthik Sundaram.

But the major trend defining the market will be increasing end user concerns over cyber security.

“Cyber security is expected to be the key parameter in safety regulations and standards that are about to be introduced in January 2012,” explains Sundaram.

On the competitive front, intense competition between tier-1 companies is causing dramatic improvements in the PLC market, leading to the emergence of new products with improved design and control capabilities that surpass traditional definitions.

Technosoft has announced that their iPOS line of highly flexible intelligent drives has been expanded with a new, micro-sized pluggable servo drive: iPOS3602 MX. Well-suited for motion control applications where space is critical, this drive can be integrated – within seconds — to a motherboard or PCB machine. All basic motor control functions and motion control and PLC features are embedded onto this remarkably small package (55 mm x 26 mm x 13 mm, 10 g).

The drive's setup, tuning and motion programming is fast with EasyMotion Studio and Technosoft Motion Language (TML). Thanks to its embedded intelligence, iPOS3602 MX is able to run complex motion commands directly at drive level. Using the TML language, multiple operations can be executed: setting of various motion modes (profiles, PVT, PT, electronic gearing or camming, etc.), change of motion modes and/or parameters, execution of homing sequences or program flow control. At the same time, iPOS3602 MX can handle digital I/O and analog input signals, execution of arithmetic and logic operations, and transfer of data between axes. The iPOS drive accepts incremental (quadrature or sine / cosine) encoders and digital or linear Halls signals as position feedback. SSI, BiSS, EnDAT absolute encoders and resolver interfaces are available through an additional extension. 

iPOS3602 MX can be set to operate in various communication modes: CANopen, EtherCAT and TMLCAN. When CANopen or EtherCAT mode is selected, the drive may be controlled via the appropriate masters. As a bonus, iPOS offers to the master the option to call complex motion sequences pre-stored in the drive's memory. When TMLCAN mode is used, iPOS3602 MX operates in standalone mode, and may play the role of a master. If higher level coordination is needed, then iPOS3602 MX can be controlled through a PC or a PLC using one of the available TML_LIB motion libraries.

Equipped with CAN / CANopen and optionally with EtherCAT interfaces, iPOS3602 MX provides a flexible, compact solution adapted to the decentralized control of any rotary or linear brushless, DC brush or step motor up to 75 W (36 V, 2 A).

Technical details are available here: http://www.technosoftmotion.com/products/OEM_PROD_iPOS3602_3604.htm.

If you are in the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) business, the recovery from the downturn happened much earlier than had been generally expected. Most PLC suppliers were pessimistic on their future business after the economic crisis of 2009 and thought their business would not recover to the level of 2008 until 2013. However, in the event, their business was back on track three years earlier than they had expected; in some countries in developing regions, such as China and India, revenues had grown even in 2009. Overall global revenues from PLCs in 2010 were nearly 30% higher than in 2009, reaching an estimated at 8.2 billion US dollars.

“Although the recovery was unexpected, it is not hard to explain,” said Alex Hong, market research analyst in IMS Research’s industrial factory automation group, “The demand for automation products in many ongoing projects stagnated when investment funding dried up in the economic downturn.  However, government economic stimulus in several countries helped to make money more available at different levels of industry.” The customers for PLC manufacturers, mostly builders or users of industrial machinery, had more access to funding to purchase more PLCs and other automation products to continue with their projects. Both the restart of projects discontinued in 2009 and the start of new ones contributed to the high growth of the PLC market in 2010.

Moving forward growth continued in 2011, though at a lower rate than in 2010. Global PLC revenues have remained high in 2011. However, the industrial markets differed by region. In Europe, despite the continuing and worsening Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the most important market for industrial automation products – Germany - continued to grow at a healthy rate. In the Americas, large projects from some end-users and growing domestic demand enabled the PLC market to grow, though the market in Latin Americas is still underdeveloped. In Asia, the markets in the growing economies of China and India have performed quite well, though that of Japan was hit by the consequences of the earthquake earlier in the year. In general, the growth of the global economy in 2011 underpinned the global growth of the PC market.

However, PLC suppliers and their industrial customers are currently very uncertain whether growth will continue into 2012, considering the risks to the world economy. Many factors, such as Europe’s unresolved sovereign debt crisis, tightening economic policy in China, and the consequences of the earthquake in Japan and the recent floods in Thailand, are affecting the market.  However, IMS Research believes that the PLC market will still grow in 2012, mainly because many large and important PLC markets, such as Germany, France, China and the US, are still performing well at the turn of the year. In addition, emerging markets, such as Brazil, and India, which already account for half the entire PLC market, will be the main driving force for future growth.

According to analysts at Frost & Sullivan, the field of industrial automation is at a cross roads: With many suppliers acknowledging that their automation and control solutions portfolios are nearing saturation, a major trend is the narrowing product definition between individual products, in particular, programmable logic controllers (PLC) and distributed control system (DCS) product lines.

“Vendors have currently emerged with hybrid products that combine PLC and DCS functionality as a means to counter high competition and gain end-user recognition,” notes Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Karthik Sundaram. “Despite economic advantages, the emergence of such products has clouded end-user perception to a large extent, and it remains to be seen if this technical strategy yields expected results.”

Frost notes a significant shift from the traditional parameters determining the  market. Currently, it is a company’s product portfolio that yields the maximum influence in the ACS market space, followed closely by service support and cost considerations. This, however, is set to change.

Frost sees momentum away from products and towards services. As the market moves this way, suppliers will need to be in tune with on-going developments and enhance their ability to compete and succeed in the future of factories.

“..the factory of the future is catalysed by five mega trends - cyber security, mobile and wireless technology, enterprise ecosystem, cloud computing and sustainability,” says Sundaram. “These mega trends will influence all aspects of an industrial enterprise.”

For instance, operating personnel in future factories will not be confined to work stations inside control rooms. The advent of tablets and mobile platforms will enable them to track production lines, perform maintenance operations and monitor process issues from their tablets – all while on the move.

The adoption of secure cloud computing technology will enable factories access to relevant strategic data from the Internet to execute real-time decisions and enhance operational efficiency.

“In essence, future factories will have secure wireless networks supporting a highly automated production process, seamlessly interlinked with enterprise software working through the clouds,” concludes Sundaram.

Since a sample of respondents in the May edition of “Industrial Ethernet Book” was not statistically accurate, IMS Research is looking again at the data, and will revise survey results in a future edition of the book.

But initial corrections are offered here.

IMS reports that Ethernet TCP/IP continues to remain the dominant Ethernet technology used in factory automation due to extensive use at the plant level, where deterministic delivery of data is not always critical to the system. Considering the Industrial Ethernet variants that are designed to support communication functionality at the lower levels of an automation system, PROFINET enjoys the largest share of nodes in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), while EtherNet/IP is most prevalent in the Americas.

The companies that champion these protocols play a large role. Siemens backs the PROFINET standard and dominates the PLC market in Europe, while Rockwell Automation supports the EtherNet/IP standard and enjoys a similarly strong position in the Americas. IMS Research suggests that PLCs represent the most influential type of automation equipment when dictating the types of protocols being used.

Given this, the company suggests that long-term outlook for the adoption of industrial Ethernet variants will continue to be heavily influenced by the choice of PLC platform in region. Both companies continue to own in excess of 50% of revenues for their respective region, and while they also both compete with great success in each other’s local market, in all likelihood their regional strengths will continue. This factor is reflected in the forecast for 2014 industrial Ethernet usage, where PROFINET is projected to continue to gain strength in EMEA and EtherNet/IP in the Americas.

With IndraLogic XLC (eXtended Logic Control), Rexroth presents a new family of PLC controllers whose capabilities go far beyond the familiar PLC standard functions. Users can leverage a wide range of new functions that achieve modular software projects quicker than before. All planning, configuration, programming and diagnostic functions are standardized in one single engineering environment. Flexible motion control functions are already integrated. IndraLogic XLC can be connected into different communication networks thanks to real-time communication via SERCOS III and other common communication interfaces.

The IndraLogic XLC PLC family enables scalable, controller-based and embedded PC solutions in conjunction with the company’s latest IndraControl device platform. Industrial PC-based hardware variants will round off the device portfolio in 2011.

Eaton Corporation is introducing the SmartWire-DT^TM panel wiring solution in North America. Already available in Europe under the brand SmartWire Darwin, the system is designed to reduce panel wiring complexity, improve system reliability, save installation time and reduce panel space. The idea changes the way panels are constructed by eliminating conventional wire and wiring found in the control circuit into a single cable, connecting motor control components to customers’ PLCs.

The SmartWire-DT system is engineered to reduce panel wiring complexity and assembly labor time, speed the start-up commissioning processes, and provide extensive run-time diagnostics. It links standard motor control components within the panel, separate distribution panels or remote control stations, and creates communications enabled devices. Additionally, the SmartWire-DT flat cable connections safeguard the control panel from unauthorized wiring changes, helping to protect the craftsmanship and integrity of the control panel.