General manufacturing automation is the main body of industrial automation

General manufacturing industry is synonymous with general automation and general equipment industry, is the main body of industrial automation, after years of development, has been intertwined with intelligent manufacturing, professional equipment manufacturing, closely linked. General manufacturing (general automation, general equipment) refers to the manufacturing industry whose products have standardized characteristics, have high universality, or provide standardized parts for other automation equipment. The professional automation application (special equipment) refers to the non-standard equipment with automation characteristics used in various industries, and the range is very wide. The upstream of industrial automation is electronic components and raw materials, and the downstream is equipment users, and the current intelligent manufacturing is accelerating the industrial chain. The upstream of the automation industry chain is electronic components and raw materials, including resistors, capacitors, chips and semi-conductor products, in addition to raw materials such as cables and structural parts. Downstream equipment users are mainly divided into OEM market and project market, mainly including electronic manufacturing, new energy, packaging and other industries, mostly belong to the scope of factory automation, the use of general-purpose equipment; As the name suggests, the project-based market includes electric power, chemical industry, metallurgy, etc., most of which belong to the category of process automation and use more special equipment. The development of information technology has promoted the intelligence of the automation industry, which is mainly reflected in the data and computing power support provided by big data and cloud computing, the operation support provided by industrial software and information systems such as MES, and the support for efficiency of the Industrial Internet of Things supported by various sensors.

The scale of China’s automation market has reached more than 200 billion yuan, the growth rate is consistent with the growth rate of machine tools and other equipment, and the periodicity is significant, and the current cycle is at the bottom, and it is at the starting point of a new round of upward cycle. According to the “China Automation Market White Paper” released by Industrial control network, the scale of China’s automation market will reach 206.3 billion yuan in 2020. According to the statistics of MIR, the scale of the automation market will reach 250.2 billion yuan in 2020, and the scale of the automation market will vary slightly under different statistical calibres. However, the growth rate is consistent with high-frequency data such as machine tool output growth. From the quarterly frequency data, the current bottom of this cycle, a new round of weekly recovery process or will be slow. From the perspective of automation market segmentation, products are the main products, but the proportion of services has increased year by year; The project-based market still accounts for more than half, but the OEM market is growing faster than the project-based market.

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According to the form and use of equipment, general manufacturing automation can be further divided into common links and industrial chain links centered on a certain type of output equipment. General equipment has a long tail attribute, which is mainly divided into two categories, one is the common link for other general equipment to use, the other is the terminal industry chain with its own output equipment, the common link mainly includes industrial control, basic parts, instruments and meters, low-voltage electrical appliances, machine vision and industrial software and other industries. The output equipment and its core industry chain mainly include CNC machine tools (CNC systems, tools), robots (precision retarders), laser equipment (lasers, laser control systems), injection molding & die casting machines, forklifts and additive manufacturing. Industrial control is the core of general automation and the “brain” of all automation processes. Basic components, instrumentation, low-voltage appliances and industrial software are also essential in almost all general-purpose equipment; Machine vision is on the rise, and some general equipment can be equipped with “eyes” to improve the degree of automation. Among the output equipment, CNC machine tools and robots are the most important standardized equipment at present. Forklift has certain mechanical properties, but it is widely used in all manufacturing industries, and it is also a typical general equipment; Additive manufacturing has just emerged, and unlike other industries, other industries are manufacturing around “reducing material”, and additive manufacturing technology represented by 3D printing is very suitable for the production of special workpieces, and the future is expected to subvert the general manufacturing industry.

According to discrete manufacturing and process manufacturing, general manufacturing automation can be divided into factory automation and process automation, corresponding to the OEM/ project system market, factory automation with industrial control as the core, process automation with instrumentation and other sensing devices as the core, general automation can be divided into five levels according to the system link: 1) The control system aims to control the automation process, including controller, man-machine interface, industrial software and numerical control system according to different applications, PLC (programmable logic controller) is the core hardware of the control system; 2) The drive system is designed to transmit the control signal to the executive device. The drive system mainly includes servo driver, inverter, soft starter, etc. The motor is the power source of the drive system, and the core devices are servo drive and frequency converter; 3) The execution system includes all kinds of execution devices to realize the control process, including all kinds of motors at the power end and the reducer/encoder/regulating valve to realize the control adjustment; 4) The feedback system includes all kinds of sensing and display devices, mainly sensors, temperature and pressure transmitters, process instruments, etc. 5) The output system is the assembly of automation equipment, the current standard equipment mainly includes robots, CNC machine tools, injection molding machines, laser equipment, forklifts, etc. Each type of standardized equipment can be called an industry, with a complete industrial chain.