VIPA Chinese business partners conference: sharing new technology and stepping forward robustly

VIPA GmbH as an automation technology and control system solution supplier from Germany has quickly caught the developing opportunities in domestic market its first aboarding and has enjoyed a 30% growth each year ever since, offices are found in Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing separately, VIPA has a variety of business associates, including agents and system integrators. As early as 2003, VIPA successfully designed a PLC CPU SPEED7 which is now the fastest CPU used in rack mounting, and announced the beginning of another great development in control field. As in a time when domestic business is rapidly growing, VIPA held the first VIPA Chinese business partners conference on May 30^th, 2008 with the theme of “Gathering strengths and moving forward hand in hand”, tens of business associates are invited to witness the achievements of VIPA, and together with them, we enter the new era of china’s development. VIPA President Mr. Wolfgang SEEL, global sales director Mr. Bob Linkenbach and general manager mainland China Mr. Xuyong, participated this meeting and proudly introduced the development of VIPA in China to the International Industrial Automation News () during the short intervals of the meeting.  

Products advancing with the times and technology continuously innovating

”Ten years of time is enough to educate a generation, and automation technology has been changing drastically over ten years .July 1^st, 1997 is a memorable day, VIPA officially entered Chinese market, starting exploiting Chinese market conforming to current situation”, VIPA GM of China Mr. Xuyong still could hardly contain his excitement. Mr. Wolfgang SEEL said：”VIPA was founded in 1985, whose headquarter is located in Bavaria in southern Germany, it has developed from a formal automation application engineering company to a professional control related hardware and software solution supplier now. Business is carried out in more than 50 countries and regions over the five continents in the world, these companies and branches compose a perfect developing, designing, selling as well as service architecture, with more than 300 employees and revenue about USD 100 million globally.”

“VIPA was an engineering company of Siemens in the early period and has been extending the functions of Siemens controllers, the attributes of Siemens products are supplemented, improved and extended. The industry Ethernet module of S5 designed by VIPA has entitled VIPA as one of the top 100 most innovative enterprises in Germany. VIPA vowed to be the most innovative enterprise ever since its foundation, and VIPA has its own innovative products chain now”, Mr. Xuyong said proudly, “System 200V is a middle and small size control system, it is based on fieldbus master/slave modularized control system, the products are programmed based on STEP 5 or STEP 7. System 300S series are compatible with SIEMENS S7-300/400, and can be programmed with VIPA WinPLC 7 or SIEMENS STEP 7, the maximum memory is 8M, with high speed performance, the DP/PtP interface not only supports Profibus-DP master/slave communication but also can be configured for PtP RS485, the ASCII, STX/ETX, 3964R and Modbus master station are supported, and it is very easy to use, each 300S CPU has an Ethernet interface. System 100V is a small all-in-one programmable logic controller, with HMI TD & TP touching screen, VIPA has become a comprehensive supplier for the products of all level in automation control process”.

VIPA lays high emphasis on self innovation, continuously develops new product to keep pace with the automation control market demand. “The most innovative product is Speed 7, it is designed by its R&D company - Profichip, which is of very short periodic operation time as quick as 100,000 instruction per millisecond. SPEED7 CPU also provides highly secure encryption-based function - storing the confidential functions in CPU, making it not possible for a third party to read or identify eternally, to protect the intelligent property of application developers, the PLC 300S and 500S equipped with Speed7 is the fasted PLC in the world, they are of high speed computing ability and can be programmed via industry Ethernet” Mr. Xu continued his speech that VIPA enjoyed a lots of good news recently, because of the fast developed business requirement, the Beijing office has just been moved to a new place to strengthen the high efficiency communication with customers and to provide technical support.

Many projects in china to manifest VIPA’s comprehensive strength

VIPA has been working on developing industry automation and fieldbus system and provides customers with high quality products which represent the new technology, including PLC, touching screen and all kinds of fieldbus products. VIPA has kept high speed and healthy development, it has become a new strong force in industry control field within years. VIPA has a variety of business in China, with countless successful applications, VIPA has found its way into wood-based panel machinery, positive and negative particle colliding machine, auto painting line, beer brewing, metallurgy automation, water processing, paper making, medicine, coal, cement, electrical power, petrochemical, light industry, municipal heating supply, urban light rail, etc. Companies using VIPA products in automotive field are: Audi, BMW, Volkswagen, Benz, Ford, etc. Mr. Bob Linkenbach talked about the global product strategy:” China is one of VIPA’s most important overseas markets, accounting for 10% of the global market and is growing rapidly. VIPA has a very abundant production line, widely distributed divisions, agencies and offices can provide customers with zero distance technical support and the feedback from the customers can make our products stronger and better performance. VIPA PLC has a variety range of products covering large, normal and small size applications, customers are provided with full solution and services from the project products selection, project implementation until the project acceptance assessment.”

The high speed high-end CPU based on SPEED7 has been used in many big control projects and achieved excellent economic benefits ever since its release. Now VIPA successfully applies this new technology in the small and micro PLCs. “VIPA products have good reliability and high performance price ratio, we are very strong in research and development, many projects and customer solutions have proven the power of VIPA products”, said Mr. Xuyong.

Mr. Wolfgang SEEL is also very proud of the performance of VIPA in research and development ability, he said, “VIPA products support many fieldbus protocols, products supporting fieldbus can be connected via Profibus, Interbus, CANopen, DeviceNet interface module to make up master, slave station system, and PLC products can be programmed through industry Ethernet. VIPA products can use industry Ethernet to communicate, although for now fieldbus is the main communication technology in China, the industry Ethernet will be used more and more widely, and this trend can be easily seen in Germany.”

We could feel it more and more obvious that nowadays VIPA has gradually shown its glare and display its charming. Each participant of this “Gathering strengths and moving forward hand in hand” business partners conference has deeply felt the determination, confidence and consistence of VIPA in China market. VIPA’s motivation worth everyone’s respect and it is for sure that VIPA will develop more and more successfully in China and achieves more and more great performance in the future.