As we all know, from the 1960s onwards, Western countries have relied on technological progress (i.e. new equipment, new processes and computer applications) to begin the transformation of traditional industries, so that the rapid development of industry. the world's biggest change at the end of the 20th century is the formation of the global market. The global market led to unprecedented competition, prompting enterprises must speed up the time to market new products (TimetoMarket), improve quality (Quality), reduce costs (Cost) and improve the service system (Service), which is the enterprise's T.Q.C.S..
While the computer integrated manufacturing system (CIMS) combined with information integration and system integration, the pursuit of a more perfect T.Q.C.S., so that enterprises to realize the "at the right time, the right information in the right way to the right person, in order to make the right decision", that is, "five correct". "The Five Right Things. However, this kind of automation needs to invest a lot of money, is a kind of high investment, high efficiency and at the same time high risk development mode, it is difficult for most of the small and medium-sized enterprises to adopt. In China, small and medium-sized enterprises as well as quasi-large enterprises take the road of low-cost industrial control automation still. Industrial control automation mainly contains three levels, from bottom to top is basic automation, process automation and management automation, the core of which is basic automation and process automation.
Traditional automation systems, basic automation part of the basic monopoly by PLC and DCS, process automation and management automation part of the process is mainly composed of a variety of imported computers or minicomputers, its hardware, system software and application software prices are high enough to make a lot of companies shy away.
Since the 1990s, due to the development of PC-based industrial computers (referred to as industrial PCs), industrial PCs, I/O devices, monitoring devices, control networks composed of PC-based automation system has been rapidly popularized, and become an important way to achieve low-cost industrial automation. China's Chongqing Iron and Steel Company, such a large enterprise of almost all large-scale heating furnace, but also removed the original DCS or single-loop digital regulator, but instead of industrial PC to form a control system, and the use of fuzzy control algorithms, and obtained good results. Since PC-based controllers have proven to be as available* as PLCs and are accepted by operators and maintenance personnel, one manufacturer after another is adopting PC-based control schemes for at least part of their production. PC-based control systems are easy to install and use, have advanced diagnostic capabilities, offer system integrators more flexibility, and in the long run, PC control systems are low maintenance.
Because programmable controllers (PLCs) are most threatened by PC control, PLC vendors are uneasy about PC adoption. In fact, programmable controllers (PLCs) are joining the PC control "wave".
Industrial PCs have been developing exceptionally rapidly in China. From the world, industrial PC mainly contains two types: IPC industrial control machine and CompactPCI industrial control machine and their deformation machine, such as AT96 bus industrial control machine. Due to the basic automation and process automation on the industrial PC's operational stability, hot swapping and redundancy configuration requirements are very high, the existing IPC can not fully meet the requirements, will gradually withdraw from the field, and will be replaced by CompactPCI-based industrial control machine, and IPC will occupy the management automation layer. The state in 2001 set up a "industrial control computer-based open control system industrialization" of industrial automation major special projects, the goal is to develop PC-based control system with independent intellectual property rights, in 3 (5 years, to occupy 30% (50% of the domestic market, and to achieve industrialization.
A few years ago, when the "soft PLC" appeared, the industry has thought that the industrial PC will replace the PLC. However, to date, the industrial PC did not replace the PLC, there are two main reasons: one is the reason for the system integration; the other is the reason for the software operating system WindowsNT. A successful PC-based control system to have two points: one is all the work to be done by a platform on the software; the second is to provide customers with all the things they need. It can be expected, industrial PC and PLC competition will be mainly in high-end applications, its data complexity and high degree of equipment integration. Industrial PC is unlikely to compete with low-priced micro-PLC, which is the fastest growing part of the PLC market. In terms of trends, the future of control systems is likely to exist between industrial PCs and PLCs, and signs of these convergences are already appearing.
Like PLCs, the industrial PC market has remained flat over the past two years. Compared with PLCs, industrial PC software is cheap. Frost & Sullivan estimates that of the $700 million annual industrial PC market worldwide, about $85 million is for control software and $100 million is for operating systems. By 2007 will double, the industrial PC market has become very substantial.