Although the Chinese OEM market has experienced roller coaster-like ups and downs over the past five years, it still cannot conceal the fact that it is the world's largest OEM market and maintains a strong growth momentum. "Rising", "expanding", and "raising" are some of the words we commonly use to describe this market, but the meaning is complicated.

The power of its growth comes from two aspects: The first is the natural growth of the demand body. China’s domestic demand still has broad prospects. Despite the harsh external environment, it is also gradually favored. The second and more crucial factor is that the expansion of manufacturing scale is combined with the improvement of manufacturing level.

The space for growth in China at present and for a period of time in the future is more in the economic market. Chinese manufacturers have apparently made significant progress in entering this market. For example, in the lifting and construction machinery industry, China’s leading companies can almost equalize with global leaders and continue to expand market share. . Of course, the successes achieved in these two industries have a great cost of manufacturing factors - they all require a lot of basic components and labor costs. Those leading Chinese enterprises have already achieved a qualitative improvement in technology and have long had a cost advantage.

In smaller, more sophisticated machinery manufacturing, the same story is happening, but the process is slightly slower. For instance, in the packaging and textile fields, the proportion of imports has been declining year by year, and the number of exports has been increasing, and the destination of exports is no longer confined to developing countries. Instead, it has started to export more to the middle and high-end markets of developed countries.

This large increase in the scale of manufacturing and even manufacturing, a large part of the rise in the level of automation, including the use of more friendly man-machine interface and more use of frequency control, and more precise positioning of motion control products, and even will Bus technology is applied to machinery manufacturing. The level of OEM automation in China is clearly on the rise. As the control center PLC (programmable logic controller), its demand has also increased over the years, and the function is constantly improving to meet more and more complex control requirements.

The increase in the level of manufacturing has also led to increasingly fierce competition. The upgrade of competition is mainly manifested in the following three aspects: First, increase manpower investment. Although the agency system is still the mainstream business model for small-scale automation, with Siemens Industry as an example, the company has invested more manpower in market management and development. It has set up 62 offices in China and established a customer service group to “close to the customer. ". At the same time, improve service response speed, and more importantly, allocate resources and meet customer needs according to industry needs. Second, more products that meet local needs are introduced in product development. The last point, and more importantly, is price competition. This is one of the characteristics of China's market demand, and this point has become more apparent in the past few years. When all prices appear to be on the rise, automation products have maintained a steady decline.

The performance of Siemens' small PLC market is outstanding. As a world-famous company with a history of 140 years in China, Siemens was one of the first suppliers of electronic and electrical engineering to enter the Chinese market. In 1979, Siemens provided cold-rolling automation systems to Baoshan Iron and Steel Plant, including the SIMATIC S5 PLC that caused a sensation in the industry at Hannover Messe. It was around 1997 that the Siemens mini PLC entered China. At that time, the SIMATIC S7-200 was first landed in China as a "Made in Germany" small PLC product.

In the past 10 years, Siemens has begun to increase investment in this emerging market. In 2005, Siemens CNC (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. (SNC) launched the S7-200CN product, which is also Siemens' first small-scale PLC developed and produced in China and only for the local market. This is a very forward-looking strategic move. At the time, the industry was very controversial. The question of whether it would ensure quality and whether it would create effective competitiveness followed suit.

However, feedback from the market has dispelled the doubts of the industry. The S7-200CN follows the reliable quality of the S7-200 while it is easier to operate and maintain. The cost of product design, production, logistics, and service has been saved. Prices are also more accepted by Chinese customers than imported products, and they can be put into the market faster. Afterwards, Siemens also introduced localized products, such as the SIMATIC SmartLine wonderful series of operation screens released in 2011, and the logic controller LOGO! 0BA7 series supporting Ethernet. Localized manufacturing not only brings lower cost and price space, but more importantly, it strengthens the absorption of Chinese demand and the development process of corresponding new products.

The increasing demand for PLC technology continues to grow. China's huge and continuously developing OEM manufacturing industry is enough to show that this is a worthy investment market. This is especially true for small automation, especially small PLC vendors. For a strategic market, strategic investment and constant innovation are needed.

Detailed analysis, from the perspective of products and applications, OEM's manufacturing level continues to increase, use more friendly and easy to use programming software to improve learning and programming efficiency, increase the number of control points while reducing the installation space, using Ethernet in a small PLC The requirements of network technologies such as networks and fieldbuses are constantly increasing. All these pose more challenges to PLC manufacturers.

For Siemens, its innovative technology will continue and will be the dominant force in the market for a long time. Its small PLC has enjoyed a very high reputation in the industry. For its easy-to-use, reliable, fast delivery time and very competitive prices, users in China have given a high degree of recognition. The most important thing is that localization of Siemens will enable it to gain more competitive advantages in the research and development of new products. Thanks to SNC's years of R&D experience and the Chengdu plant that will be put into operation early next year, Siemens will be able to develop more products that can fully meet the needs of the Chinese market and lead the development of the automation market.