Market dynamics drive growth in PLC and PLC-based PACs industry, as per ARC Advisory Group

ARC Advisory Group’s latest research revealed that the worldwide Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) and PLC-based PACs market returned to a reliable, mid-single-digit growth in 2022.

The research firm states that this growth behaviour, however, masks a combination of market dynamics of price hikes, currency fluctuations and large backorders.

ARC explains that much of the growth was due to inflation-induced price hikes imposed by suppliers in 2021 and 2022 and due to the enormous backlogs accrued by suppliers due to chip shortages. ARC’s PLC research tracks shipments and not orders. 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 U.S. dollars.

“The Industrial Internet of Things (Industrial IoT) is changing how industrial processes are controlled and monitored, but PLCs are growing with and adapting to new challenges rather than being replaced by alternate technologies. Despite threats from contemporary technologies, the classic PLC continues to be the preferred choice among machine builders and end users to control industrial machinery and processes, as well as in infrastructure applications. Based on established industrial technology, PLCs are valued for their speed, repeatability, reliability, and ease of deployment and maintenance. These characteristics are difficult to achieve with other technologies,” said David Humphrey, research director and key author of ARC’s PLCs and PLC-based PACs Market Research.

Programmable logic controllers market trends

In addition to providing market share data, the report also addresses key market trends as follows:

• Communications become more standardized and universal
• Connect to the cloud
• Expect more frequent migration
• More IO to gather more information
• MTP adds flexibility and scalability
• PLCs go industrial IoT
• Software-defined everything

In addition to providing specific market data and industry trends, this ARC market research also identifies and positions the leading suppliers to this market and provides and summarizes their relevant offerings. An alphabetical list of key suppliers covered in this analysis includes: Mitsubishi Electric, OMRON, Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, Siemens.