n December 18, coinciding with the 45th anniversary of my country's reform and opening up, Shanghai Foxboro Co., Ltd. (Foxboro China), a subsidiary of Schneider Electric, held a 40th anniversary celebration. In 1983, as one of the earliest Sino-US joint ventures, Foxboro China was established in Xuhui District, Shanghai. It became the first Sino-foreign joint venture high-tech enterprise in my country's instrumentation and electronics industry, thus kicking off the process of leading the vigorous development of China's process automation industry. A new beginning.
A century of accumulation, promoting a leap in process automation
Foxboro is an entrepreneurial company that originated in Massachusetts in 1908. Since the introduction of the first controller in the 1920s, Foxboro has been focusing on innovation in the field of industrial control automation, providing automation and information technology, control systems, software, services and consulting services to the manufacturing and infrastructure industries. Overall solution.
In 1983, under the background of Sino-US trade cooperation, coincided with the opportunity of China's vigorous investment in the construction of petrochemical, chemical, oil and gas and other process projects, and the active introduction of global high-tech, Foxboro China Company was officially established. Within two or three years of its establishment, Foxboro China has completed the transfer of the latest technologies and products to China. The complete sets of system equipment products it produces are used in petroleum, chemical industry, electric power, metallurgy, mining, building materials, textiles, etc. in various provinces and cities across the country. Used in food and other industries. In the first six years since its establishment, the company's turnover increased 48 times and its profits increased 23 times.
Zhu Naxin, a veteran employee who joined the company in 1988, has witnessed the historic breakthroughs of Foxboro China. In December 1991, Shanghai Foxboro Co., Ltd. became the first enterprise in China to obtain the ISO 9001 international quality certificate, making a benchmark contribution to shortening the gap between my country's instrument industry and even the industrial field and the international advanced level. “After obtaining this certification, companies from all over the country came to us to learn from us. Many experts from the older generation eventually became experts in quality systems, sharing our experience and helping more companies obtain international quality system certification. Many companies later gradually moved out of China and sold their products around the world," Zhu Naxin recalled.
As a global technology expert specializing in industrial control systems, Foxboro has always been in line with local customer needs and technology trends in China, completing the transition from hardware to software, from analog to digital, from closed to open, and from automation to digitalization. Gorgeous upgrade.
After four decades of hard work, Foxboro's business in China has already covered major process industries such as China's chemical industry, oil refining, petrochemicals, power generation, steel, cement, glass, pharmaceuticals, food and offshore oil platforms. Zhu Naxin, who has worked in technical training, field service, sales engineer and sales manager, has served almost all well-known companies in the industry in the past 35 years. He mentioned that, in particular, the application of major oil refining units such as atmospheric and vacuum pressure, catalysis, hydrogenation, and delayed coking in China's first power plants and the first refineries all started from the earliest application of analog DCS systems. And with the continuous innovation and upgrading of the Foxboro platform. With the iteration of new technologies and the upgrading of old infrastructure, Foxboro also works with enterprises to innovate. For example, at the Juhua Thermal Power Plant, it worked with customers to develop unattended solutions for the thermal power industry to improve the operational stability and efficiency of the thermal power plant. In addition, large local companies such as Hainan Refinery and Dongming Petrochemical have deepened cooperation with Foxboro China to strengthen cooperation in the software field, tap the value of data, and keep up with the needs of the digital transformation era.
The digital era opens a new chapter
After being merged into Schneider Electric in 2014, Foxboro China has integrated Schneider Electric's integrated energy management and process automation solutions and further collaborated with industrial software to add green and digital wings, whether it is technology changes or localization business progress has ushered in a new chapter. With the launch of the new generation EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS process automation system, the Foxboro I/A Series control system, known for its reliability and future-oriented industrial architecture, has been expanded and integrated with Triconex Safety, which has more than 30 years of experience in functional safety and critical control applications. technology to provide enterprise customers with a component object-based engineering environment and one-stop platform services. At the solution level, the system covers almost everything from field instruments, to control systems, safety systems, to upper-level optimization, and finally to the complete system of digital factory design and operation and maintenance; and at the application level, it can handle many large and complex systems. Control and protect process facilities, fully adapting to different process industries and different device application scenarios.
At present, in order to continuously pursue the ultimate goal of "stable, long-term, full and excellent" operation of large-scale integrated process equipment, process industry companies such as refining and chemical companies are engaged in automation engineering design and delivery, instrumentation, control, operation, maintenance, equipment management, public engineering, etc. Changes are urgently needed in a series of links. In this regard, Schneider Electric provides comprehensive process automation and digital solutions for typical process industry users based on the open EcoStruxure architecture and platform, which covers the Foxboro DCS process automation system, as well as Foxboro process instrumentation, Triconex safety instrumentation solutions, Full life cycle software solutions, including AVEVA industrial software, run through the entire life cycle of enterprise design, construction, operation and maintenance.
After forty years of glory, I went to the mountains and seas renewed. Looking back on the past, we are grateful; looking forward to the future, we are full of confidence. In the days to come, Foxboro China will continue to uphold the fine tradition of forty years, continue to innovate and develop, and with the support of Schneider Electric’s energy management and digital capabilities, create new Chinese stories and join hands with more Chinese process industry users. Toward a more efficient and sustainable future industry.
