Rockwell Price Madness

Here in the Detroit area, I'm starting to see a fair number of customers using Comfort panels paired with AB PLCs.

You're seeing this because its been the GM specification for a couple of years now. When GM was strictly Siemens they had a large investment in Siemens HMI development (horror story actually if you've every opened up one of their projects). With the change to the AB family, they kept it because of the low cost of the newer Comfort panels. At first, it was a real pain to take their HMI template and convert it to the Comfort series because the revised template wasn't ready.
 
Probably half the price of the AB hardware as well!

True, but also half the support unfortunately.

The reason AB costs so much is because I can (usually) get anything today and call someone immediately if I have issues (assuming, of course, that I have a tech contract).
 
True, but also half the support unfortunately.

The reason AB costs so much is because I can (usually) get anything today and call someone immediately if I have issues (assuming, of course, that I have a tech contract).

That and their hardware lasts forever. As does Siemens.
 
Indusoft is a great alternative to Factorytalk View...

You can import your PLC tags from Allen Bradley processors, and do direct reference similar to FactoryTalk.

The price for a runtime license with 1500 tags is $1600

One feature I love is you can have a timer value in seconds and display it on the HMI in HH:MM:SS just by changing the formatting. Doing this with Factorytalk requires a fair bit of PLC programming....
 
Indusoft is a great alternative to Factorytalk View...

You can import your PLC tags from Allen Bradley processors, and do direct reference similar to FactoryTalk.

The price for a runtime license with 1500 tags is $1600

One feature I love is you can have a timer value in seconds and display it on the HMI in HH:MM:SS just by changing the formatting. Doing this with Factorytalk requires a fair bit of PLC programming....

So every HMI requires a $1600 runtime license, no cost savings there.
 
I hear a lot of good things about Ignition but I have never used or priced it. If I did that AB tattoo on my back side would burst in to flames.
 
[quiet voice]

If you're an OEM with a Toolkit and a pricing discount agreement with your Rockwell Automation distributor, and you experience a substantial price increase, then there's a commercial reason.

I don't know if it's because you don't pay your invoices in a timely manner, or you didn't buy enough last year to support the agreement, or if you've diverted product in violation of your agreement, or if your account has been moved to a new sales rep, or if RA is simply raising prices for your market or agreement type.

I had a regional manager who took over and promptly signed up a bunch of OEMs for deep discounts, based on promises and exaggerations that he made about their future sales and how much competitive product it would displace. A couple years later, when those exaggerated predictions didn't come true, those OEMs lost the discounts. It was disruptive and unpleasant for everybody, but that guy had meanwhile gone on to a new job (at Siemens, naturally).

There's always a commercial reason. It's not always a good one. But it's not because RA has "lost their mind".
 
True, but also half the support unfortunately.

The reason AB costs so much is because I can (usually) get anything today and call someone immediately if I have issues (assuming, of course, that I have a tech contract).
Which you pay for dearly!!

Siemens support is free by the way.
You can also opt for a paid support service as well.

I can also call my distributor and get most things expedited as well.
So, what's your point????
 
Which you pay for dearly!!

Siemens support is free by the way.
You can also opt for a paid support service as well.

I can also call my distributor and get most things expedited as well.
So, what's your point????

I can't get siemens stuff same day. In many cases I have long lead times. It isn't that I don't like siemens - I actually think they are smoking Rockwell in the low-end PLC market.

But other items like motor starters, etc just don't have the stock that AB does in my area (in my experience).
 
Rockwell seems to rip you guys off across the pond compared to over here.

I couldn't believe the price for replacement parts when in states for a job, its around 20% more than here.

We are mostly AB and a 5 seat toolkit license is free from the UK major AB distributor.

I just assumed as an OEM putting the business the distributors way it would be a standard thing.
 
Every time we get a price increase we politely remind them that we have to increase the cost to our customers, which in turn opens the customer's eyes to other options. The result is that customers start accepting other options. This goes to other companies, but unfortunately AB is the one it happens with most.
I've had plenty of big, repeat customers stop specifying panelviews and let us do a red lion, maple, delta, etc.

30% sounds ridiculous, though. Either your company had a long standing agreement or the rep just never re-evaluated your company and they decided to get you "current" all at once. Regardless, there should be some discussion with them to understand why the increase and negotiate some things. Our distributor has at least been open to discussion to let us understand reasons behind increases. We've been able to negotiate special pricing on certain items as well to help offset overall increases.

Profit is the easiest language for distributors and companies like AB to understand. Speak it to em!
 
What is the comparison point ? What does the quoted 5700 USD get ?
Is this a panel or is it a PC HMI ?
is the 5700 USD the net price, or do you have to pay additionally for example for support ?

The no of I/O seems to me to indicate a relatively small machine or plant.
32 AI
24 AO
32 DO
32 DI

L33ER / L36ER
 
[quiet voice]

If you're an OEM with a Toolkit and a pricing discount agreement with your Rockwell Automation distributor, and you experience a substantial price increase, then there's a commercial reason.

I don't know if it's because you don't pay your invoices in a timely manner, or you didn't buy enough last year to support the agreement, or if you've diverted product in violation of your agreement, or if your account has been moved to a new sales rep, or if RA is simply raising prices for your market or agreement type.

I had a regional manager who took over and promptly signed up a bunch of OEMs for deep discounts, based on promises and exaggerations that he made about their future sales and how much competitive product it would displace. A couple years later, when those exaggerated predictions didn't come true, those OEMs lost the discounts. It was disruptive and unpleasant for everybody, but that guy had meanwhile gone on to a new job (at Siemens, naturally).

There's always a commercial reason. It's not always a good one. But it's not because RA has "lost their mind".
Very well said.
 
I don't particularly like that solution, especially when you take a Studio 5000 user to the CCW platform.

If kinda sounds like you haven't worked with CCW version 12 yet. It's a lot more like Studio and my understanding is that trend isn't going to stop. I've been working with CCW since it was first introduced and it used to be very difficult to use and very limited in what you could do. Rockwell finally accepted the fact that they screwed up (to put it politely) and fixed it. It took several iterations but they did fix it and I find it much easier to use and much more powerful.
 

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