On February 14, the domestically produced IFA platform was officially released by Inovance Technology, which is comparable to the Siemens TIA fully integrated automation development platform. This platform is the first industrial automation platform in China similar to the Siemens TIA, B&R AS (AS should be the world's earliest fully integrated platform, but it is more IT and more challenging for engineers), and CODESYS. The release of the IFA platform by Inovance Technology has broken the absolute hegemony of foreign industrial automation platforms. In the past, domestic PLC programming software was indeed a bit inferior to Siemens TIA and CODESYS.
For a long time, foreign brands such as Siemens, Rockwell, and CODESYS have occupied a dominant position in the industrial automation platform with their first-mover advantage and technological accumulation. Today, Inovance Technology has broken this situation and officially released IFA, which is similar to the Siemens TIA fully integrated automation development platform. This achievement is of great significance and marks that the domestic industrial automation platform has ushered in a new stage of development.
The IFA platform integrates various communication protocols such as EtherCAT, EtherNETIP, and CANopen. Its comprehensive communication capabilities enable it to efficiently interact with various devices, whether it is sensors, drives, or complex control systems on industrial sites, to achieve seamless connections, providing a solid foundation for building complex industrial automation systems. It supports the IEC61131-3 international standard programming language, which enables engineers familiar with the standard to quickly get started, lowering the development threshold and improving development efficiency. The online configuration function of the device allows engineers to adjust the configuration in real time during the operation of the device, and the visualization function presents the system operation status and data in an intuitive and easy-to-understand interface, greatly facilitating operation and monitoring.
Inovance Technology is ambitious in the field of industrial automation and has a great potential to dominate the world. Among the small automation products it launched, Autoshop is benchmarked against Mitsubishi, InProshop is benchmarked against Omron and Schneider, and IFA Evolution is benchmarked against Siemens TIA Portal, covering the full range of industrial automation needs from small to large, from simple to complex, and focusing on not letting any one go. Only children make choices, and adults want both. No matter which ecosystem it is, as long as there is market demand and customer base, we must attack. To be a latecomer means to walk the path of our predecessors and build comprehensive three-dimensional competitiveness. No matter in the east, west, south or north, as long as there is a market, we must attack.
The development of industrial automation software is difficult. PLC development is extremely expensive, especially industrial automation platform development. The boss of Huichuan Technology said that Huichuan Technology faced many challenges in developing the IFA platform. In the early stage of the team formation, the company lacked experience in large-scale industrial software development, and the number of domestic professional developers was insufficient to meet the development needs. More importantly, in key technical fields such as compilers, real-time operating systems, virtualization, and core algorithms, China has long relied on foreign technology and is in a dilemma of being "stuck in the neck", which has greatly hindered the team in obtaining technical support and attracting high-end talents.
Huichuan Technology was not intimidated by the difficulties. In order to solve these problems, the company has taken a series of positive and effective measures. The establishment of R&D centers in Xi'an and Germany has fully integrated the rich domestic industrial software talent resources and the advanced experience of international experts. In this way, the team can quickly accumulate technology and experience, achieve self-sustaining and talent training. In the process of research and development, the support of software engineering and processes is also crucial, which ensures the efficient and orderly progress of research and development work. After unremitting efforts, Huichuan Technology has achieved fruitful results.
In less than five years, the development of IFA, a large-scale industrial software, was successfully completed. Inovance has achieved breakthroughs in core technologies such as fully autonomous IDE (integrated development environment), compiler, real-time operating system, virtual control and simulation, breaking the monopoly of foreign technology and filling the long-term gap in domestic related technologies. At the same time, it has forged an elite R&D team of hundreds of people, providing a solid talent guarantee for the company's future sustainable development in the field of industrial automation. The annual R&D investment of more than 100 million yuan also demonstrates Inovance's determination and investment in this field.
Li Ruilin, vice president of Inovance Technology, said before that the platform deeply integrates all categories of products in the execution/sensing layer, drive layer, control layer, and edge layer of industrial automation, and can be fully linked with the top information layer to achieve the generational integration of automation, digitization, and intelligence. This means that it can provide self-selected generation solutions from basic automation to leading intelligence for different industrial scenarios to meet diverse industrial needs. The successful launch of the IFA software platform is not only a major victory for Inovance Technology, but also a milestone in China's industrial automation field. From then on, attacking and defending aliens, the enemy can go, and I can go too.
