Automotive industry gives green light to PC-based control

Citation

(1998), "Automotive industry gives green light to PC-based control", Assembly Automation, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/aa.1998.03318dab.002

Automotive industry gives green light to PC-based control

Automotive industry gives green light to PC-based control

Keywords Control systems, Market survey

The European PC-based control systems market is set to realise unprecedented growth rates by the turn of the century, with the automotive industry leading the way, according to a new report from MarketLine International, PC-based Industrial Control Systems.

The report incorporates the results of an end-user-focused survey, which covered 11 major industrial countries and nine major end-user industries, in order to ascertain the future growth potential of PC-based control solutions.

The report reveals:

1. 1.

   The automotive industry is the most optimistic by far about the future of PC-based control.

2. 2.

   The uptake of PC-based control systems is forecast to grow by 535 per cent between now and 2000.

The automotive industry is the most optimistic by far about the future of PC-based control

The MarketLine end-user survey placed the automotive industry at the top of its optimism league. Decision makers and influential process engineers stated that they thought that there was a greater than evens chance of 1998 being the year that the European automotive industry began large scale investment on PC-based control solutions. Conversely, industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and water and waste, stated that they did not expect significant growth to occur in their industry until 2002.

The US automotive industry is certainly one of the highest profile investors in PC-based control systems, with recent examples including General Motors and Chrysler. GM's Powertrain Group investment in Nematron's PC-based control software, OpenControl, has built on earlier exposure to Nematron's FloPro. Chrysler have installed Open Automation computers from Eaton Corp's Cutler Hammer, instead of PLCs, which run Steeplechase's Visual Logic Controller (VLC) for real-time control. Chrysler's aim was to lower costs, improve visualisation of processes, and increase productivity. Both of these two high-profile projects now have at least three years run time between them, enough to encourage others to take the plunge. In Europe, optimism, if not specific examples of industry investment, matches that of the USA.

Starting from a small base, the overall growth rate of PC-based control systems is expected to reach unprecedented heights

According to MarketLine, the European market for PC-based control systems will rocket over the next five years. The currently small installed base for PC-based control solutions across the nine end-user industries surveyed makes for projected explosive increases over the next three, 24-month periods taking the industry up to 2004. Between 1998 and 2000, MarketLine forecasts 535 per cent growth in PC-based control systems, compared to just 8 per cent and 3 per cent growth in the uptake of distributed control systems (DCS) and programmable logic controllers (PLC) (see Table I).

MarketLine consultant Martin Atherton comments:

"The combination of the existing small market base, high growth rate projections across many European end-user industries, and general end-user optimism ­ despite concerns about reliability ­ have produced this expected explosion in the take-up of PC-based control solutions.

"Most significant growth is expected around the turn of the century. At this point, existing development and run-time versions of PC-based systems will have been installed for several years, allowing enough feedback to filter through to the specific industries."

The combination of several contributory factors feeds MarketLine's expectation that such high growth rates predicted by European end-users will be achieved:

• •

  manufacturers will undoubtedly get better at passing on the positive aspects of PC-based solutions to their prospective customers;

• •

  the evolution of traditional DCS to PC-based networks;

• •

  the increasing numbers of PC-based solutions to what are currently micro-PLC applications.

PC-Based Control Systems is available from MarketLine International at a cost of £1,995.

For further information contact: Russ Milburn. Tel: 0171 316 0001; Fax: 0171 316 0002; www: milburn@datamonitor.com