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Schneider shows us where Citect went: into PlantStruxure, that's where! #pauto

March 26, 2010

The sustainability bandwagon has gotten a little bigger, with the introduction of PlantStruxure and ecoStruxure from Schneider Electric. Schneider, better known for its Square D, Modicon, Telemechanique and Merlin Guerin PLCs and electrical hardware, acquired Citect in a bitterly contested acquisition several years ago. Predictably this led to nearly the entire upper level staff, both management and engineering, leaving the company. Many of Citect's customers became very worried about the viability of the SCADA and MES products that were Citect's hallmarks. Then Citect's SCADA product became involved in a very public security issue that was even reported in the mainstream news media. Now Schneider has revealed the going-forward plan: incorporate CitectSCADA and AMPLA into a new, integrated product platform and product portfolio.

In the meantime, Schneider Electric executives were re-positioning the company to take advantage of Schneider's ability to combine plant controls with electrical controls for the purpose of saving energy. In fact the title and meta-tagline of the Schneider Electric website emphasize this:

<title>Schneider Electric is the Global Specialist in Energy Managementtitle><meta content="Schneider Electric, global specialist in energy management, with solutions for power and control, critical power, energy efficiency, automation and renewable energy from plant to plug." name="description"><meta content="Schneider Electric : Electrical Distribution, Automation and Control, energy management, solutions for power and control, critical power, energy efficiency, automation, renewable energy" name="keywords">

Having regularized their disparate PLC lines under the banner of Modicon, and their motor control business under the IMPCC banner, and having added a safety PLC component, it was only natural that they should put together Citect's SCADA product and the AMPLA MES system, and offer a top-to-bottom solution. The only thing they don't have, as Andrew Brown, System Marketing Manager, admitted in an interview yesterday, is a field device product line. "We can work with anybody's field devices," Brown said.

This places Schneider directly in competition with ABB, with their campaign to integrate power and plant control systems, and with Rockwell Automation, whose product portfolio is remarkably similar to the new PlantStruxure platform (Rockwell calls it PlantPAX), and with Siemens, who can do many of the same things.

For end users, this is a wonderful thing. Competition, especially between excellent systems, is always a net good.

Unfortunately for Schneider, ABB and Siemens DO have field device product lines, and Rockwell Automation is tightly in bed with Endress+Hauser, the largest manufacturer of field devices in the world.

So, I would look for Schneider to do some alliance making, or maybe even an acquisition. There are some very good companies in Japan and in the Far East that might solve or help to solve this problem.

Emerson and Honeywell are significantly behind in this effort to combine power and plant controls, in the name of energy management. They do have the ability to catch up quickly, and I would expect they will. With the new orientation of Invensys to being a giant global system integrator, we can expect similar offerings from them shortly.

The issue, though, is not how well the products work, but how well the installed systems do at saving energy and optimizing plant energy usage. That's going to be the touchstone for all of the major vendors' energy management initiatives.

End users, be happy! Competition reigns supreme.