The four families have their own strengths in various technical fields. ABB's core field is control system, KUKA is system integration application and ontology manufacturing, Fanuc is numerical control system, and An Chuan is servo motor and motion controller.
ABB Switzerland
ABB is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. The business covers five fields: power products, discrete automation, motion control, process automation and low-voltage products, among which power and automation technology are the most famous. ABB emphasizes the integrity of the robot itself. For its six-axis robot, the single-axis speed is not the fastest, but the precision of six-axis joint operation is very high.
Core field
ABB's core technology is motion control system, which is also the biggest difficulty of the robot itself. ABB, which has mastered the motion control technology, can easily realize robot performance such as tracking accuracy, motion speed, cycle time and programmable design, and greatly improve the quality, efficiency and reliability of production.
Technology: The algorithm is the best, but slightly more expensive.
ABB started out as a frequency converter. In China, ABB manufactures most power stations and frequency conversion stations. For the robot itself, the biggest difficulty lies in the motion control system, and ABB's core advantage is motion control. It can be said that ABB's robot algorithm is the best among the four major brands. It not only has a comprehensive motion control solution, but also the technical documents used in the product are quite professional and specific.
It is reported that ABB's control cabinet comes with Robot Studio software, which can perform 3D operation simulation and online functions. The connection with external equipment supports a variety of general industrial bus interfaces, and communication with various brands of welding power supply, cutting power supply and PLC can also be realized by marking input and output interfaces. In addition, ABB's control cabinet can freely set parameters such as current, voltage, speed and swing during arc starting, heating, welding and arc closing, and can set and realize various complicated swing trajectories by itself.
ABB also pays attention to the overall characteristics of robots, and pays attention to the design of robots as well as the quality, but as we all know, ABB robots equipped with high-standard control systems are very expensive. In addition, many enterprises report that ABB has the longest delivery time among the four major brands.
Domestic market analysis
ABB implements the strategy of holding high and fighting high in China, focusing on cooperation with major customers in China. Huawei, Changhong and Tuosida are the application leaders and integrators of 3C household appliances industry respectively, and they play the role of weather vane in the industry. ABB attaches great importance to 3C industry. Its future products will be more integrated with advanced technologies such as intelligence, interconnection and big data. Ontology enterprises begin to move towards the application end, and the relationship with system integrators will be closer; At the same time, ontology enterprises themselves began to pay attention to the development of integrated applications.
Kuka, Germany
KUKA Germany was founded in augsburg, Germany, 1898. At first, it mainly focused on indoor and urban lighting, and soon began to set foot in other fields. KUKA's main customers come from the field of automobile manufacturing, and also focus on providing advanced automation solutions for industrial production processes, as well as brain surgery and radiological imaging in hospitals.
Core field
KUKA robot can be used for material handling, processing, spot welding and arc welding, involving automation, metal processing, food and plastic industries.
Technology: simple operation, but high failure rate.
Midea's acquisition of KUKA can be described as a fire for KUKA. If ABB is the Mercedes-Benz in the car, then KUKA is the BMW in the car. Although they are all high-end cars, BMW's repair rate is taller than Mercedes-Benz.
It is reported that compared with ABB, Fanuc and other robots, the repair rate of KUKA robot is higher. Some people familiar with the matter have reported that robots that have used KUKA have faults almost every day.
The advantage of Kuka's domestic sales lies in its good secondary development. Even Xiao Bai, who has no technical foundation at all, can get started in one day. In the man-machine interface, in order to cater to the habits of China people, KUKA is very simple, just like playing a game machine. In contrast, the control system of Japanese robots has many keyboards and the operation is slightly complicated.
It is worth mentioning that KUKA has done a good job in the field of heavy robots. Among the robots above 1.20kg, KUKA and ABB have the largest market share, while among the heavy robots of 400KG and 600KG, KUKA has the largest sales volume.
Domestic market analysis
KUKA is currently accelerating the layout of localization services in China market, opening up new territory in southwest China, and will continue to exert its strength in the field of automobile equipment in the future. Midea's acquisition of KUKA went down in history, which had a great impact on the influence and market responsiveness of the two major brands. The joint effect of future beauty and KUKA is also worth looking forward to.
FANUC Japan
FANUC company was founded in 1956, and electro-hydraulic stepping motor was first introduced three years later. In 1970s, due to the rapid development of microelectronics technology, power electronics technology, especially computing technology, FANUC resolutely abandoned the electro-hydraulic stepping motor numerical control products that made it rich and began to transform. 1976, FANUC successfully developed a numerical control system, and then jointly developed a high-level numerical control system with Siemens, and gradually became one of the most powerful enterprises in numerical control system, design and manufacturing in the world.
Core field
FANUC is a professional CNC system manufacturer in the world. Compared with other enterprises, the industrial robot is unique in that the process control is more convenient, the base size of the same robot is smaller, and it has a unique arm design.
Technology: high accuracy, but poor overload.
Fanuc's research on CNC system can be traced back to 1956. Foresighted Japanese technical experts foresaw the coming of 3C era and set up a scientific research team. The advantages of numerical control system will be applied to robots, and Fanuc's industrial robots have high precision. It is reported that Fanuc's multifunctional six-axis small robot can achieve the repetitive positioning accuracy of plus or minus 0.02 mm In addition, compared with other enterprises, Fanuc industrial robot is unique in that the process control is more convenient, the base size of the same type of robot is smaller, and it has a unique arm design.
It is worth mentioning that Fanuc applies the blade compensation function of CNC machine tool finishing to the robot, and implants the blade compensation function from the algorithm, which makes the robot cycle in the process of finishing and cutting, but An Chuan's robot body does not have this function. To achieve this function, we can only make up for it through secondary development, which is also the inconvenience of robots reported by some customers in An Chuan.
However, Fanuc is not the best in the stability of robots. When the speed reaches 80% in the process of full load operation, Fanuc's robot will give an alarm, which also shows that Fanuc's robot overload ability is not very good. Therefore, Fanuc has the advantages of light load and high precision application, which is also the reason why Fanuc miniaturized robots (below 24KG) sell well.
Domestic market analysis
FANUC's strategy is slightly different from that of other economists. Its strategy is to find and enter the market with large demand, aiming at the China market with huge growth potential. In China market, 55% of Fanuc's industrial robots are used in general manufacturing, and the top three are household appliances, logistics and electronic appliances. FANUC is the robot brand with the largest total sales volume in the market at present, and adopts an open market strategy that does not depend on the sales volume of major customers.
Founded in 19 15, it is the largest industrial robot company in Japan, headquartered in Kitakyushu Island, Fukuoka Prefecture. 1977, yaskawa electric co., ltd developed and produced the first fully electrified industrial robot in Japan by using its own motion control technology. Since then, various automatic robots such as welding, assembly, painting and handling have been developed, which has been leading the global industrial robot market.
Core field
Yaskawa Electric Corporation mainly produces servo and motion controllers, which are the key components of manufacturing robots, and has successively developed various automatic robots such as welding, assembly, spraying and handling. Its core industrial robot products include spot welding and arc welding robots, painting and processing robots, LCD glass plate transmission robots and semiconductor chip transmission robots. It is one of the earliest manufacturers to apply industrial robots to semiconductor production.
Technology: Good stability, but slightly poor accuracy.
With nearly a hundred years of motor technology inheritance, the market share of AC servo and inverter in An Chuan ranks first in the world. As early as 1977, An Chuan developed the first Japanese all-electric industrial robot.
An Chuan starts with the motor, so the inertia of the motor can be maximized. Therefore, the biggest feature of An Chuan's robot is its heavy load and high stability. It will not give an alarm or even overload when running at full load and full speed. Therefore, An Chuan has a relatively large market in the application field of heavy robots, such as automobile industry.
Compared with Fanuc robot, the accuracy of An Chuan robot is not so high. On the basis of the same price, if customers require high precision, they will often choose Fanuc robots. However, the price advantage of robots in An Chuan is obvious, which can be said to be the lowest among the four major brands. Moreover, the welding robots in An Chuan include welding packages, and the quotation is only13/140,000. Compared with Panasonic's welding robot, An Chuan takes the road of mass production.
Domestic market analysis
In recent years, An Chuan has made frequent moves in the domestic market: building a new robot center, increasing factory investment, and establishing a joint venture with the United States, aiming at speeding up the localization service. China is a demand-side market, and Midea is also a home appliance giant. There is a huge demand for robots, which can help An Chuan achieve sales promotion.
An Chuan has been doing research on service robots, especially in the field of medical robots, but it is not progressing smoothly in the Japanese market, which may bring new growth points to the domestic service robot market. At present, major robot companies tend to seek cooperation with larger application-oriented enterprises. With the increasingly fierce market competition, this kind of strategic cooperation will be more frequent in the future.
The best industrial robots are European products, and KUKA is the first. However, when the four families entered the Asian market, the localization quality of ABB robots declined. Compared with European and American products, Japanese An Chuan and Fanuc have higher CP values, which are more in line with the needs of customers in China.
Nowadays, robot manufacturers are usually more inclined to cooperate with well-known brand car manufacturers. For example, FOSS only uses KUKA, GM mainly uses Fanuc, and European brands prefer ABB, which is closely related to the strategic adjustment of the four major industrial families.
The four families all started from businesses related to the robot industry chain. For example, ABB and Yaskawa Electric are engaged in the business of power equipment motors, Fanuc studies numerical control systems, and KUKA initially engaged in welding equipment. They can finally become the world's leading comprehensive industrial automation enterprises, all because they have mastered the technology of robot ontology and its core components, devoted themselves to research and finally realized integrated development.
Whether due to historical reasons or the influence of cultural ideas, we can see from the products of these four main robot enterprises that the enterprises have chosen different development paths in the face of market changes, and who can go further will ultimately be decided by the market.