Industrial Automation Companies in Hyderabad

Hyderabad is not the first name that pops in your mind when thinking about industrial automation in India. While Pune has the automotive industry, Chennai has vehicle manufacturers, and Ahmedabad has chemicals, Hyderabad’s image is associated with pharmaceuticals and the IT sector, both of which happen to be true.

What is overlooked in this reputation is that the capital of Telangana has a wide range of panel builders, system integrators, and instrumentation shops that provide for the industries of Jeedimetla, Patancheru and Medchal, as well as the aerospace and pharmaceuticals industries that demand much stricter controls than an ordinary machine shop.

To answer the question in brief, Hyderabad automation market is catered by the mix of national OEMs having their local branches (Siemens, ABB, Schneider, Rockwell, Delta, Autonics) and the indigenous system integrators including Prudent Automation (established in 1998), Vinayak Automation Products (2007), Indus Automation Technologies (2013), Stellar Automation and Hanuman Automation (2017) being some of the examples. Most of them are small organizations, ranging from 10 to 50 employees. These companies are specialized based upon the industry rather than the product involved. The project cost can range from couple of lakhs of rupees for a panel to several crores for a line with the brand of the control platform being the major cost lever in the process.

Why Hyderabad, Specifically

Three factors determine how automation is acquired in Hyderabad.

• The pharmaceutical industry has established the norms for documentation. An engineer from Hyderabad is familiar with the necessary paperwork for validation, 21 CFR Part 11, and audit trails because the clients have to abide by them. Hence, integrators come from this territory with FAT protocols in place.
• The aerospace sector has made the tolerances to be followed. The Adibatla aerospace park and its suppliers are accustomed to the tolerances in drawings as well as traceability requirements that any general engineering company can only dream of. This is why machine vision and inline inspection are the norm rather than something that one can only hope for.
• The cost structure is lower than in Pune or Chennai. Engineering workers and the rates for panel building and commissioning are all lower than in the western belt, which allows integrators from Hyderabad to remain competitive even in the projects in Gujarat or Maharashtra.

The Industrial Base the City Actually Has

The estates that really matter are not as well-known as HITEC City, but might be more important for a buyer of automation technology.

Manufacturing, electrical, and general engineering industries are based in Jeedimetla and Balanagar, two major industrial zones located nearby Hyderabad and containing many panel builders. Patancheru and Bollaram are known as the chemicals and pharmaceuticals area dominated by process control, measuring devices, and equipment for hazardous areas. Light engineering and packaging production are done in Medchal and Nacharam. Finally, Genome Valley and the pharmaceutical corridor is the area of biological production characterized by cleanroom controls and various measuring devices.

Hyderabad has a developed electrical production base, and the component suppliers are users of automation technology as well.This is not a small niche: the circuit breaker and switchgear plants around Hyderabad and the wider Telangana belt run assembly lines, test benches and calibration rigs, a market described in this overview of circuit breaker manufacturing in India. Every one of those plants is a buyer of pick-and-place, leak test and calibration automation.

The Integrators Worth Knowing

Think of the table as an illustration rather than a ranking. The market in Hyderabad is home to a large number of companies of the same size, without noteworthy participants, which is a point in favor of the market itself: it enables a buyer to get at least three reliable offers without speaking to the same company twice.

Prudent automation illustrates the case. Founded in 1998 by engineer ex-employee of Allen-Bradley’s commissioning team, it developed its reputation based on the wagon loading system for NMDC and software interfacing with Indian Railways’ freight, which makes an important, difficult to implement and useful niche. That is how the integration companies survive in the market by being not generalists but having one difficult problem solved in one branch.

The second model is Vinayak. Nineteen years in component distribution, over 10,000 clients and a sister company — Aseiro Industries, which specializes in vision systems, robotics, and machine safety — perfect for integration purposes.

For a national view of how this local market compares with Pune, Chennai and Ahmedabad, including the larger integrators that will travel for a project, this guide to industrial automation companies across India covers the wider landscape.

What These Companies Actually Sell

The list of services is common in the sector with the distinction being in the area of offering services.

• Control systems engineering. Designing and programming PLCs and HMIs, developing SCADA, programming drives, and creating the electrical layout for each of them. A small 5 people company performs well for one machine solution while it requires a team with lots of previous experience in large projects for dozens of machines.
• Panel assembly. Manufacturing MCC, PCC, PLC, and VFD panels. This is something that Hyderabad excels at since both component supply and manufacturing facilities are close to each other.
• Supply and calibration of instruments. Flow, level, pressure, and temperature instruments along with certification of their calibration.
• Retrofitting and migration. Replacing obsolete PLCs, transferring relay logic panel from reed logic to PLC, upgrading machines working the same way for the past fifteen years. This is by far the largest and least discussed market segment.
• Robotics and vision systems. A smaller yet fast-growing group focused primarily on inspection and pick-and-place operations rather than welding. What a credible robotics integration project involves, from simulation through to safety validation, is set out in this look at robotics system integration.

Industries Buying Automation in Hyderabad

• Pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceuticals. The major buyer. The focus is on recipe control, audit trail, cleanroom control and validated change management. A company that has no experience on using 21 CFR will cost you more in paperwork than in the hardware equipment.
• Aerospace and defense. This company focuses on inspection, traceability, and machine vision. Tolerances are very strict and the paperwork is heavier than the control.
• Electrical and switchgear manufacturing. This company does assembling, calibrating, and testing automation and also provides testing for leakages and dielectric tests.
• Food and beverage industry. This company gives its focus on production and packaging but it is becoming more and more important to pay attention to traceability and speed of changing recipes.
• Packaging and plastic industry. This company uses injection molding, tray loading, and other processes that are usually carried out by people.
• Water and irrigation. This company is responsible for pumping stations and telemetry but has to work in the hardest conditions of Telangana’s rural areas.

The Electrical Manufacturing Niche

It deserves its specific section because that is where the automation and parts industries connect most strongly in Hyderabad.

A plant producing circuit-breakers needs three different pieces which ordinary automation companies do not supply namely: a mechanical assembly sequence involving a force watch mechanism, an electrical acceptance test bench providing test trip characteristics with predetermined accuracy, and a marking and tracing stage linking a serial number with the acceptance test report. The first two stages are a particular kind of cam-and-servo motion while the last one involves a large cost as a test bench that logs the results into a database is software connected to a machine.

The same situation can be seen in meter assembly, MCB calibration and switchgear sub-assembly. In these cases, a semi-automatic process is applied which includes manual loading, automated assembly and testing and manual unloading. The combination of the approaches applied was purposeful. Manual loading allows accepting variations of incoming parts and automating the process before the parts become standardized is the reason why the project will fail its acceptance test. The full range of what an assembly automation supplier offers in this market is described in this overview of automatic assembly machine manufacturers in India.

What a Project Costs, and Why Quotes Differ Threefold

In Hyderabad, two quotes have different costs for performing the same works and this is mostly not because of the labour costs.

• The brand of the control system. This has the biggest influence on the price. The systems based on Siemens or Rockwell devices will cost differently compared to the systems based on Delta or Autonics devices, the performance of both systems being the same. The question of whether a difference in price is worth paying depends of whether there are certain standards set for the industry, whether the spare parts are to be purchased from the local distributor and whether the maintenance personnel can program it.
• Scope of the mechanical works. A retrofit for a control system may cost several lakhs. A new machine even with specific tools and a servo drive is multiple times more expensive due to the large costs of mechanical engineering and start-up works.
• Validation and documentation. A pharmaceutical project with FAT, SAT and qualification will have a documentation framework making up 20-30% of the total project costs. A general engineering customer would never accept having to pay for that.
• Spare parts and warranty. More expensive is a two-year on-site warranty with provision of spare parts than a one-year back-to-base warranty.

Which Integrator for Which Job

Make the supplier’s shapes correspond to the shapes of projects done.

• Specialist with a single machine that has a one-time designation fits. The staff consists of no more than 15 people with at least one engineer managing the whole product development, and it is enough if the direct link to the owner is provided. Ask who is developing the mechanism’s design and make sure this person will remain till the project is completed.
• An organization with good project management is required in the case of the plant-wide implementation, with developed documentation. An organization of 50 to 200 people can conduct such an operation and a small firm cannot pretend that it can do it.
• In the case of instrument-heavy operations, choose a distributor with real manufacturing capability and relations with other companies. The delivery equipment calculated by a person selling several brands is better than the one selected from the catalogue.
• In case of assembly or test automation with a mechanical element, it is a case of machine building with automation. Look for a provider who builds mechanical assembly and not just involves himself in creation of the test panel.

Where Benlong Fits

Benlong is not an integrator based in Hyderabad but actually a manufacturer. The company provides several solutions, from automated production lines and injection molding tooling to production systems, as well as MCB and MCCB production lines and testing and calibration stations, making the necessary control units itself instead of outsourcing this process.

This is crucial when considering the fact that an integrator’s job is done once a third-party machine starts communicating with the system; creating a machine that performs indexing, pressing, testing, and releasing functions is a whole different ballgame. Two examples of the equipment in question: a robot automatic feeding system for injection moulding machines, which addresses the labour problem at the start of a moulding cell, and the tray handling and loading stations that go with it.

To be clear on the location issue: Benlong is located in Guangdong, not Telangana, and there are some time zone issues that need to be considered by Hyderabad customers, as well as remote testing of the factory and paperwork to consider for importing. The transaction consists of equipment cost and the costs associated with setting up the line compared to a shorter local supply chain. If looking for a panel, it is wise to purchase from a local supplier; if purchasing a line that will last many years, the calculations will be different.

FAQ

Who are the top industrial automation companies?

In the global market, the biggest name among manufacturers, if we go by the installed base, are Siemens, Rockwell Automation, ABB, Schneider Electric, Mitsubishi Electric, Omron, Emerson, Honeywell, Yokogawa and FANUC. In India, Siemens Ltd and ABB India dominate the electrical and automation industry. Among the large players, Honeywell Automation India holds a prominent position purely in the automation sector. Below the major players are many national integrators who undertake the installations.

What are the top 5 companies in Hyderabad?

It is not their size but their local presence that makes them worthy of being mentioned as Prudent Automation for SCADA and utilities work, Vinayak Automation Products in regard instrumentation and drive systems, Indus Automation Technologies for IIOT and energy management solutions, Stellar Automation as suppliers of Process skids, and Hanuman Automation for component supply and panel-integrated solutions. They cannot be ranked among each other because it makes no sense without defining the category of project, as they are not sharing any of their core competencies among them.

Which is the largest industrial automation company in India?

The answer is dependent on the criteria. By revenue, Siemens Ltd is India’s leading listed electrical and automation company. Honeywell Automation India often holds the title of the largest company in terms of market capitalisation. ABB India is trailing closely behind in terms of revenue. None of the three has its headquarters in Hyderabad while all of them conduct their business through project teams and channel partners in the area.

What are the top 20 industrial automation companies in India?

A list of international companies with operations in India includes: Siemens, ABB, Schneider Electric, Rockwell Automation, Honeywell, Emerson, Yokogawa, Mitsubishi Electric, Omron, Fuji Electric, Delta Electronics, Phoenix Contact, Pepperl+Fuchs, SICK, Endress+Hauser, ifm, Festo, SMC, Yaskawa and FANUC. Apart from these international companies, the domestic integration market is also held by the regional players such as the companies from Hyderabad discussed earlier; in addition, national players in cities such as Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru also contribute. For making a decision on a purchase, the list of OEMs is vital to consider for the choice of platform, while that of integrators is important for the choice of delivery.

References

• Prudent Automation — SCADA and PLC Integration, Hyderabad
• Vinayak Automation Products — Instrumentation and Drives, Secunderabad
• Indus Automation Technologies — IIoT and Control Panels, Hyderabad
• India Automation Hub — Integrator Directory
• IEEMA — Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturers Association

Conclusion

The automation industry in Hyderabad consists of a number of small companies that are good at one particular thing under Indian manufacturers who provide platforms. When it comes to buying, this means that rather than looking at a directory, buyers should build their shortlist according to project type and the first question to ask any vendor should be not what they are capable of but what they have already accomplished twice.

If you take three quotes from your suppliers, you will see widely different estimates. The differences are in the control platform and the documentation package, and both need to be taken into account before comparing the prices.