Most Commonly Used PLC Brand for automation

It depends on the applications.

The company that I work for uses different PLC's based on our customers requirements. We have just recently standardized on Siemens PLC's simply because of price and support. We have used many Automation Direct PLC's and Rockwell PLC's although personally I do not like Rockwell products, they can be a real pain to work some times not to mention the prices.

Ron Brown said:

although personally I do not like Rockwell products, they can be a real pain to work some times not to mention the prices.

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I can say the say thing , but insert word Siemens for the word Rockwell.
Its always a personal preference.

Ian

You can say the same thing about DCS manufacturers too.

In my experience it seems to be whichever manufacturer makes the best sales pitch to the customers upper management.

If Rockwell is particularly good at schmoozing that customer then we get AB to deal with ... same goes for Siemens, Schneider and now it seems Yokogawa is having a stab at things with its Stardom offering.

If a vendor is having a big sales push in a region then alot of the time they will 'buy' a job or two just to get an installed base.

As an integrator we have to be pretty much prepared for anything.

The only product I havnt dealt with with much is Automation Direct.

SLC_Integrator said:

The only product I havnt dealt with with much is Automation Direct.

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I have found the Bean Counters at some companies love A/D as they can go to A-Ds web site and order hardware online bypassing the distributor.
I guess in their minds , if it is sold online and you can 'ADD TO SHOPPING CART' it must be better.

Ian

curlyandshemp said:

I have found the Bean Counters at some companies love A/D as they can go to A-Ds web site and order hardware online bypassing the distributor.
I guess in their minds , if it is sold online and you can 'ADD TO SHOPPING CART' it must be better.

Ian

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Just to fair, I'm not so sure thats the reason. You can do that with AB too.

When I bought some AB stuff from their online store it was shipped from the nearest distributor, so the "middle man" is not eliminated. The prices from the online store are list prices. You will almost surely get a better price if you ask for a quotation from the local distributor.

Mickey said:

Just to fair, I'm not so sure thats the reason. You can do that with AB too.

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No here in Canada, we are told by Rockwell who we have to buy our stuff from. If our distributor starts messing up big time on orders, we cannot threaten them to smarten up or we will buy from the other Rockwell distributor. The only way we can buy from someone else is to move into their territory.


Ian

Mickey said:

Just to fair, I'm not so sure thats the reason. You can do that with AB too.

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And just to confirm what Steve Bailey stated, this is my price in
CAD$ for that same CPU

ToolGuyFred said:

My current employers have standardised on Mitsubishi but we also have:
Omron
Allen-Bradley
Siemens
GE Fanuc
Idec
Square D
Toshiba
B&R
Sigmatek

I've only been here three months so there may be others lurking out there in some dark corner.

You've guessed it. Sometimes production purchases machinery without talking to engineering first...

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Sounds an awful lot like a place I worked at until a few months ago. Main difference is you say sometimes production don’t listen to engineering, whereas the place I worked they never listened.

What really brought this home to me was when we had a meeting with a machine manufacturer we were proposing to buy a machine from. The production manager seemed puzzled as to why I even felt the need to be in such a meeting. When I got to say my piece and explained that we wanted a Mitsi controller in the machine because this was our factory standard the response I got was as though I was wasting everyone’s time with trivial stuff that wasn’t relevant to anything. I explained that our maintenance guys understood Mitsi better than any other PLCs so could troubleshoot without calling in outside help but just got ignored. I explained that if we standardised we would need to carry fewer spare parts but just got ignored. There after they didn’t invite me to any other such meetings.


When the machine came it had an S7 300, written in statement list with all comments in German.

(BTW ToolGuyFred, the machine in question is the ZMP1 Pugmill...good luck!)

When the machine came it had an S7 300, written in statement list with all comments in German.

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If you need a translation sometime, feel free to ask!

Sorry for continuing the sidetracking. But there is a relevant twist to the sidetrack (see the end my post).

I have to comment on Potter's post.
You see, I sit on the other side of that table because we are an OEM company making machinery for customers all over the world.
We ALSO want to standardise, so we chose a brand of PLC and concentrate 100% on that (*). Customers that ask for a different brand get a polite "no" or asked to accept 25% higer price + 100% longer delievry time. They then accept our standard. Even huge industrial conglomerates that try to impose their standards dont get treated differently.
You must consider that maybe it is difficult to maintain many brands for the end-customer, but it is unendingly more difficult for the manufacturer to rewrite the code and HMI and to make sure that it is up to high quality standards. To switch brands on our most complicated machinery will mean man-years of work. You must also consider that the customer then has a non-standard machine that cannot benefit from the service we provide. The trend is that maintenance is moving from the customer to the manufacturer, at least partially.

With all that said, we also try to satisfy our customers demand for a PLC brand that they already use. Considerations are partly price, functionality, reliability, documentation etc. and partly market pressence worldwide.
That is why we obviously only consider a few brands as contenders.
Small upstarts or low-cost brands dont get considered, no matter how good or how cheap they are.
By doing so there is a chance, but no guarantee, that we and our customer have the same brands.

Shall I name our brands, oh well, they are Siemens and AB. If we were situated in the far east, then maybe one of the Japanese brands would be in our arsenal, at the expense of one of the other two.

*:Actually it is 2 brands as you can see.

JesperMP said:

... Customers that ask for a different brand get a polite "no" or asked to accept 25% higer price + 100% longer delievry time. They then accept our standard. Even huge industrial conglomerates that try to impose their standards dont get treated differently.

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I've worked on both sides of this fence. Having worked as an SI, I understand and appreciate your comment here. It's tough having a machine already developed with one hardware package, then having to convert it to another. Plus having to maintain all of those software packages, cables, spare parts, training...

Right now, I work for one of those "huge industrial conglomerates" -- and if I have a voice on a project (not a good assumption...) it IS worth the higher cost and longer delivery for an OEM to supply us with our standard hardware.

It make my life much, much easier to get hardware that we already support. With 45 facilities to support, anything I can do to make my life easier is worth a few extra $$.

We have standardized on AB. Right now, it appears that they provide the best local and global support in our locations. I have some experience with Siemens -- a great product, but not supported in half of our locations. I hear lots of good comments about Omron -- there is NO local support for them in this location. Period. I can't even really consider them an option. The closest Mitsi rep is approximately 200 miles away -- again, I can't consider them.


Actually, the OP's original question was which one is the best. Ultimately, all of the "major players" are good -- or they wouldn't be a "major player". For me, it comes down to support (not just here at my site, but local to all of our sites) and preference (which is typically formed by experience).

OZEE said:

[...] it IS worth the higher cost and longer delivery for an OEM to supply us with our standard hardware.

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If you are an OEM that have only one or two large customers, then yes, otherwise no (we for our part have hundreds of different customers). In the end it is the customer that shall ask himself if he is willing to accept the extra cost and delay.

I actually like it when a customer buys off-the-shelf OEM stuff with a gazillion different brands of PLC.

Keeos us in business knitting them all together!

It drives customers maintenance guys nuts tho because they keep asking what kind of software they need to support the latest skid thats been installed and the price is always $$$.

Like I said ... keeps us in business tho.