Widest accepted plc

awalinski

Member
Join Date
Sep 2002
Posts
38
Out of curiosity and necessity, I would like to hear from you all around the world, telling me which plc brand is prevalent in your country.
This is my newest assignment: choose one ( as future standard) which will be accepted by almost every country.
Thanks to all who will take time to reply.
 
SIEMENS S7 is very commonly used and accepted everywhere in Europe.

OMRON is also quite popular.

I'm also interested in hearing what PLCs are most common in Asia, South- and North America.

My company uses SIEMENS as standard, but sometimes the customer wants something else. Australia has been the first place where one customer insisted of having Allen Bradleys.
 
awalinski said:
which plc brand is prevalent in your country.

Sorry awalinski, I can't tell you what PLC brand is prevalent within the UK, simply because I don't know and I wouldn't like to guess.
Where I work, all our new installations use Siemens PLC's so for us it is Siemens. If you get more answers from people within the UK, I am fairly sure that you will get different brands mentioned. You will have to research PLC manufacturers market share figures to get a true picture of which brand is the most prevalent in each country.

Paul
 
USA is open to anything I think

I work in a manufacturing plant that produces building wire (electrical wire for commercial and residential construction). We have many different PLC's in the plant from previous regimes of engineers and maintenance personnel responsible for equipment specification. Since I started equipment specifications for capital projects in 1999, I have standardized on Allen-Bradley products (SLC, PLC, MicroLogix, and now starting to use ControlLogix in some applications). We do still on occasion receive used or surplus equipment that has other brands in it (or antiquated discrete relay logic - ugh!). If we can get away with it, we will gut the cabinet and start over with ALB. We are just more comfortable and have local support for this platform, but I am sure that if you polled the entire US, you would get a plethora of different answers! Then again, I am in the armpit of Arizona, not exactly an industrial automation hotbed! lolis
 
I agree with Paul.
I also notice that it depends of what type of industry you are working in. We are an OEM and all our clients are glass manufactures.
For us, Modicon/Telemecanique is standard but we also use Siemens and Omron, if the client asks.

I think that those are the most used brands in Europe, are those three.

Probably, if you ask the big five PLC manufacturers and add the numbers you will find a total market of 130%
 
Our company has standadised on Mitsubishi for the last 12 years since the early F series. We still have some FX's onsite and mainly use A series although we are not moving towards their Q series. Having used various other plc's from other brands and even taking into consideration my familiarity I still prefer Mitsibishi. I use IEC1131 to program all the PLC's which makes the programs easily transferable. I can write large, complicated programs quickly and easily. We also use Profibus to communicate to many pieces of equipment and use lots of remote IO modules. This combination makes for a very flexible system. Hope this helps.

Oh, we have also used some soft PLC's onsite as well, these have been very sucesful also.
 
In the USA, Allen-Bradley is the single biggest vendor. I've worked in steel, timber, paper, and chemical mills all over the USA and maybe 60% of the heavy industries here use primarily A-B.

There are probably other industries that favor other brands; Mitsubishi I've seen in many electronics factories that are Japanese-owned, and I see Siemens in the packaging business sometimes. My cousin serves on an US Navy aircraft carrier that just ripped out all their S7 and installed A-B ControlLogix.

Modicon, GE, and Omron are all just bit players here. Modicon especially has had a dramatic decrease in sales in the USA since they abandoned the Quantum/984/584 family, as the new Telemechanique controllers have essentially flopped in the US. I have never seen a Premium TSX outside a brochure.
 
GE is a bit player?

Methinks someone needs to look at market data.

I personally am kinda familiar with GE, now HAVE to work with a GE/Horner product but not happy with some aspects.

Nonetheless...AB is not as dominant as would be thought in the US.

As for bit player...AB/Rockwell is NOT in the league with GE when it comes to SALES overall and the plc market gap gets smaller every year.

Simple fact: In the US AB is a major provider for plcs BUT if you work in the US and have to deal with PLC's then expect to see LOTS of GE, AutomationDirect, OMRON, and Siemens. I have never seen a Mitsubishi and I agree that Modicon is a dying breed, the older ones are still prevalent tho, just not as much as those I mentioned.
 
Mitsi is used almost exlusively in japan and a lot in the far east. It's used quite a bit in Europe although seimens and the like have a BIG share.
 
In New Zealand Allen Bradley has about 50% of the market, the rest is split between Modicon, Omron and Seimens in roughly that order.

Tpically Omron has a good small system OEM style presence, Modicon is very much hampered by the Schneider Tele marketing confusion and Seimens is promoted largely by a few committed SI/Agency types.

Only Rockwell has a clear cut marketing message, with full sales and tech support here.

The story would be similar in Australia...although I think AB has a somewhat smaller market share there.
 
I didn't mean to give an impression of overall business or market capitalization. Rockwell is almost entirely an industrial automation company, but GE is so much more, with industrial switchgear, generation, motors, etc. I think it always sort of annoyed me that my GE rep portrayed GE's mammoth market capitalization (half of GE is their GE Capital banking division) as the size of their PLC business.

I have never seen a 90-70 that wasn't being used as a doorstop. And the Horner stuff should be crushed, melted, and dumped into the sea.

GE Drive Systems are a totally different matter... many paper mills I've been in have colossal drive systems of which their PLC's are only a small part. But if you go into the rest of the automated systems in the mill... PLC-5 everywhere.

If the original topic of the thread is to be addressed: Siemens is the overall king of the hill globally. Just not in the industries and facilities I am familiar with.
 
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Seimens and GE are large companies with an enormous diversity of product and service, Seimens especially so.

But if split out just their Industrial Automation business, and more particulary the PLC related market then it is my understanding that globally they rank:

1. Seimens
2. Rockwell
3. Schneider
4. Omron
5. Mitsibishi.

But the actual market leadership varies enormously from region to region and for different reasons. In their home markets it is understandable why each should have a strong position, but in other parts of the world the picture changes.

A lot of Seimens gear is shipped as part of turn-key deals in which the end-user client has not had any say in the PLC, whereas Rockwell has to pretty much competitively (to some degree) sell everything they ship.
 
Most of the market in Japan is dominated by Mitsubishi and Omron. I am lead to believe thay have about 80% of the market and Mitsubishi has about 55% to Omron 55% (of the 80%).
Omron have quite a strong presence on the west coast of the USA. AB, GE are probably the dominant ones but information I have received from a friend in the US is that AB are losing some ground with their core customers. Several car plants have installed some quite large systems from Omron, Mitsubishi and Schneider.
They and Mitsubishi also do quite well in many European countries. Italy, Spain and Scandanavia.
Germany and France being very much the exceptions. Schneider and Siemens are very much the flavour of the month in those two.
Australia is a mixed lot. There is still a lot of support for AB, mainly in large companies. Many have standardised there. Siemens, with their strange marketing policies in Ozz, are not doing so well. Schneider do OK. So do Mitsubishi and GE in certain areas. Automation Direct do OK when customers are looking for a "cheapy". Omron have done very well with the C200 family and now with the CJ1 appear to be doing very well. The size of a cigarette packet, no rack and will handle up to 2560 I/O. I use this PLC almost exclusively now. The Schneider Twido is starting to do quite well as it fits a "hole" in the market place, despite the very average software. I now use it on quite a few smaller jobs.
Schneider have bought companies in Australia that basically are engineering and systems integration companies and so are competing with their customers. Strange way to do business.
The Hitachi distributor is doing the same thing and has picked up quite a few nice jobs.
beerchug
 
For my part,

My company is an OEM that sells globally, to "Standardise" i selected Siemens & Mitsubishi as our preferred controllers. Reasoning was to furfill 2 of our major markets Asia & Europe. Where they are widely accepted. We can of course build with others as per demand, Omron,Allen Bradley etc.
 

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