Industrial automation is a general term for information processing and process control such as measurement and manipulation according to the expected goals without direct human intervention in the machinery and equipment or production process. Industrial automation can reduce labor costs, improve production safety, reduce raw material and energy consumption, improve production efficiency, and improve product quality, which is an important direction of global industrial upgrading. At this stage, industrial automation has been widely used in textile, pharmaceutical, electronics, chemical, metallurgy, machinery, transportation, aerospace and other manufacturing industries.
China is a big manufacturing country, in the context of economic transformation, China's manufacturing industry structure continues to optimize and upgrade, bringing huge development space for industrial automation. According to the stage of development, industrial automation can be divided into two levels of semi-automation and full automation, after long-term continuous development, China's industry has basically realized mechanized production, some enterprises have entered the semi-automation stage, and the number of enterprises entering the full automation stage is small. The level of automation is an important indicator to measure the level of a country's industry, and China's industrial automation market still has a lot of room for growth in the future.
According to the "2019-2023 China Industrial Automation Market Feasibility Research Report" released by the Xinsijie Industry Research Center, entering the 21st century, China's industrial automation market has entered a stage of rapid development, and the growth rate has gradually slowed down after 2008, with negative growth in 2015, and from 2016 to 2018, China's industrial automation market has entered a period of moderate growth, with a market size of about 172 billion yuan in 2018. It is expected to exceed 180 billion yuan in 2019.
The downstream application range of industrial automation is wide, and the requirements for industrial automation systems in different industries are quite different due to different production processes. With the continuous progress of automation control technology and the continuous improvement of the production process of downstream industries, the market has continuously improved the personalization, customization and diversification requirements of industrial automation systems, and the professional capabilities of industrial automation suppliers need to be continuously enhanced, and suppliers who can provide customized and differentiated services for downstream enterprises will have more advantages in the future competition.
Industrial automation involves many disciplines such as mechanical transmission, electrical control, sensors, microelectronics, machine vision, information technology, etc., and the industry has high technical barriers to entry. In China's industrial automation industry, most of the suppliers have not mastered the core technology, key components rely on imports, it is difficult to provide enterprises with highly customized products and services, the low-end market is its main competitive area, the high-end market is mainly dominated by international manufacturers, and the overall competitiveness of the industry is weak. The unreasonable industrial structure is an important problem in China's industrial automation industry, and the future development needs to be paid attention to.
Intelligent manufacturing industry analysts said that China is the world's manufacturing center, in the context of social and economic transformation, China's manufacturing industry has accelerated its upgrading, and the level of industrial automation has been continuously improved. However, compared with developed countries, China's industrial automation rate is still low, more production enterprises have not yet entered the semi-automation stage, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in the future industrial automation market. With the continuous progress of downstream manufacturing industry technology, China's market for industrial automation system customization, personalized requirements continue to improve, China's industrial automation industry in some core technology areas still have bottlenecks, comprehensive service capabilities are weak, the future development of industrial automation still needs to continue to break through.