Industrial automation refers to the application of automation technology in the mechanical industrial manufacturing process to realize automatic processing and continuous production, improve the efficiency and quality of mechanical production, and release productivity.
The industrial automation involves a wide range of technologies, including control engineering, ergonomics, computer software, embedded software, electronics, electric power, mechatronics, network communication and other multidisciplinary knowledge.
With the development of intelligence, industrial automation has integrated new technologies such as image processing, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence and signal processing.
After long-term development, the industrial automation industry has witnessed continuous technological innovation and the continuous expansion of downstream application fields, and has now formed a relatively mature industry competition pattern.
Multinational enterprises such as Yaskawa Electric, Panasonic Electric, Mitsubishi Group and Siemens are in a leading position worldwide. In the domestic market, European, American, Japanese and South Korean enterprises occupy a dominant position. However, local enterprises are gradually seizing the market by virtue of cost performance and rapid service capabilities, and the trend of domestic substitution is obvious. Against the background of the global entry into the Industry 4.0 era and China's vigorous development of "Intelligent Manufacturing in China", the demand for industrial automation equipment in various application fields such as production and manufacturing, transportation, energy and environmental protection has further increased.
According to the forecasts of Frost & Sullivan and the China Commercial Industry Research Institute, the global and China's industrial automation market sizes will reach 509.59 billion US dollars and 353.1 billion yuan respectively in 2024, with year-on-year growth of about 6.0% and 13.4% compared with 2023.
There are various types of industrial automation products, including core components such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Distributed Control Systems (DCS), motion controllers, Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines, frequency converters, servo systems, pneumatic components, and sensors. These products not only cover key links such as control, execution, and monitoring in industrial production, but also realize seamless collaboration between devices through integration and communication technologies, which are important foundations for realizing intelligent manufacturing.
According to the statistics of MIR 睿工业，motion control products and drive system products have declined slightly, but among the segmented products, CNC and high-voltage frequency converters have grown. In 2024, the market size of PLC was about 13.01 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 18.9%; the market size of general servo was about 20.55 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.8%; the market size of low-voltage frequency converters was about 28.28 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7.0%; the market size of medium and high-voltage frequency converters was about 5.89 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.0%.
The downstream customers of the industrial automation industry are divided into OEM type and project type. The OEM market mainly faces customers who mass-produce automated and intelligent manufacturing equipment; the project-based market refers to the design and implementation of the overall engineering automation system.
According to the statistics of MIR 睿工业，in the past 9 quarters, China's automation market achieved a slight positive growth in only one quarter, among which OEM automation has seen negative growth for 11 consecutive quarters, and project automation has shown a downward trend since the second quarter of 2024.
From the perspective of the downstream market of industrial automation, the project-based market performed better than the OEM market, with a year-on-year growth of 0.1%. Among them, industries such as petroleum, refining, chemical industry, mining, thermal power, and water conservancy were relatively booming due to policies such as equipment renewal; industries such as steel performed poorly due to overcapacity and the impact of steel prices, which reduced manufacturers' willingness to invest and transform.
The OEM market fell by 5% year-on-year. Among them, industries such as packaging machinery, plastic machinery, and textile machinery grew, while the demand for industries such as lithium battery equipment, photovoltaic equipment, and lifting machinery was relatively sluggish. In 2024, among the three major types of knitting machinery, the flat knitting machine industry recovered and improved, the circular knitting machine industry operated under pressure, and the warp knitting machine industry maintained a certain growth overall.
In 2024, China's sewing machinery industry showed a trend of recovery and growth. Against the background of policy support and the recovery of market demand, the economic benefits of the industry rebounded significantly. In 2024, the demand in domestic and foreign markets was gradually released, and the intelligent transformation and upgrading of equipment in downstream industries such as clothing, shoes and hats accelerated, driving the production and sales scale of the sewing machinery industry to recover rapidly, and the quality and efficiency of enterprises improved significantly.
With the continuous expansion of the downstream market of industrial automation and the accelerated iteration of core technologies, the industrial field is ushering in an all-round transformation. In key links such as production control and drive execution, automation technology is deeply penetrating into traditional industries such as automobile, electronics, and chemical industry, and rapidly extending to strategic emerging fields such as new energy and biomedicine.
The large-scale application of intelligent equipment such as new sensors, intelligent control systems and industrial robots has promoted the evolution of automation equipment towards more intelligent, precise and reliable directions, and continuously expanded the application boundaries of new scenarios such as intelligent warehousing and unmanned workshops. In the process of China's manufacturing industry leaping to high-end, the level of automated production continues to improve, which is becoming a key variable reshaping the global manufacturing competition pattern.
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