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Market survey in the German machinery industry 2012

Machine-builders with bias in favour of a highly integrated automation technology

Machine-builders are showing a bias in favour of a highly integrated automation technology according to the representative market survey from Quest TechnoMarketing.

 

November 11th, 2012- How was a very high degree of integration recorded?

The machine-builders evaluated eight characteristics a global integration solution may cover nowadays.

The evaluation referred to the importance of these characteristics for the machine automation until 2013 using „very important“, „important“, „less important“, „unimportant“ and „already realized“.

In a short form these eight characteristics concern:

  • integrated hardware platform
  • standardized graphic application engineering
  • integrated test simulation functions
  • Integration of wireless connections
  • Integration of a standardized logging system for data
  • Integration of the data collection of the energy consumption
  • Integrated diagnostic system
  • Integration of an Internet access to each connected device.

 

If we summarize the evaluations of each of these characteristics to a total evaluation, the following result shows up:

 

Integration of automation technology from the point of view of the machine-builders 2012.
Source: Market survey from Quest TechnoMarketing 2012 "What the machine-builders want to change 2012 in the automation technology".

Two thirds of the machine-builders display a positive feedback to a high integration of machine automation.

 

For 22% such an integration is „very important“, for further 38% „important“, together thus 60% the machine-builders. Further 4% regard this integration at their machines as already realized.

These altogether 64% of the machine-builders determine 64% of the machinery potential.

 

For a good quarter (27%) of the machine-builders a high integration of machine automation is „less important“. That means individual integrated partial solutions are preferred.

On the other hand with 9% almost each tenth of machine-builders evaluate the high degree of integration as „unimportant“.

 

We pick two representative points out of the many detailed statements of the machine-builders.

 

This positive feedback comes from robotics and automation:

  • „All points referred to are very important for our total engineering process and the HMI interface, for which individual software was developed by Codesys. Even to get the operation and the TPM integrated into the system is very, very important.“

 

One special-purpose machine-builder for food processing machines does not see „any sense“in a high degree of integration.

  • „We are special-purpose machine builder, so each machine is different, therefore it does not make any sense to integrate it into a unity. Even the MES is specified by the customer.“

 

The detailed results contains the Quest study „What the machine-builders want to change in the automation technology 2012“. 37% of the machine-builders in 10 sectors with 100 and more employees provided their feedback.