Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and PLC-based Programmable Automation Controllers (PACs)

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and PLC-based PAC Market Research delivers current market analysis plus a five year market and technology forecast. It is available in multiple editions including worldwide, all regions, and most major countries.

PLC and PLC-based PAC Market Grows and Adapts to Industrial IoT

The worldwide Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) and PLC-based PACs market returned to a reliable, mid-single-digit growth in 2022. However, this growth behavior masks a combination of market dynamics of price hikes, currency fluctuations, and large backorders. Much of the growth was due to inflation-induced price hikes imposed by suppliers in 2021 and 2022, as well as to the enormous backlogs accrued by suppliers due to chip shortages. ARC's PLC research tracks shipments and not orders, and many suppliers shipped PLC systems in 2022 that had been ordered the previous year with long lead times. Finally, currency fluctuations played an outsized role in stymieing market growth measured in US dollars.

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) Strategic Issues 

In addition to providing a five-year market forecast, the PLC and PLC-based PACs market research provides detailed quantitative current market data and addresses key strategic issues as follows.

Embrace Open Standards

Open standards help end users free themselves from the grip of proprietary technologies, paving the way for greater choice. Standards reduce engineering time when users apply pre-engineered templates to integrated products or design processes. End users should familiarize themselves with current and emerging standards and decide how these can be applied to improve efficiency and cut the costs of future projects.

OPC UA Is the Universal Language of Automation

OPC UA is more than just an open protocol for machine-to-machine communication. The complete specification contains protocols for both peer-to-peer and master-slave communication (the latter is the new Publish/Subscribe model that allows controllers to communicate deterministically with field devices). OPC UA also includes a growing number of companion specifications that are essentially information models that standardize semantics for devices and applications. End users should understand the value of using OPC UA for integrating systems and devices from different suppliers.

Explore Modular Production    

Thanks to Industrial IoT, future automation architectures will support modular machine construction and distributed control, fulfilling a dream of distributed architectures that dates back to the 1990s. In the process industries, consortia are developing specifications for machine type packages (MTP) that support standardization of modular architectures, most of which are based on PLCs. The success of standardized modular architectures will likely spill over to most other industries when the business benefits become clear.