Taiwan-based Advantech is today a world leader in the provision of solutions for the automation industry. Founded in 1983, they have had a presence in South Africa since 1988 through Johannesburg-based company ProMicro.
ProMicro was established during 1988 by Elton Prytz who may well be remembered by many readers as the owner of the design and manufacturing company Microware. Elton had a lot of experience in the design of add-on cards for PCs and in fact had looked at the possibility of manufacturing such hardware locally. A visit to Taiwan in 1988 saw him introduced to Advantech, then in its infancy, but Elton was impressed with both their innovation and quality and formed a relationship to instead distribute their products in southern Africa, an agreement that exists to this day.
In those early days Advantech was playing a game of catch up, trying to emulate products coming out of the R&D laboratories of its US and European competitors. Today that scenario is reversed and there are many clones of its products produced in the Far East. While they are not necessarily the cheapest, the products today are at the cutting edge of technology and according to Elton offer the best value in terms of both price and performance. In 2001 Advantech employed 1200 people, 700 in Taiwan and the rest in its many overseas plants, R&D centres and offices (the former being located in both the USA and China). A massive 30% of the workforce is dedicated to R&D with up to 10% of revenue being spent in this area. The success of this policy is indicated by the fact that over the past three years more than 60% of the company's revenue has been generated from new products, and that more than 30 new products are being released every year. Advantech by 2001 had also accumulated more than 100 patents pertaining to its core technologies.
While it is positioned at the forefront of the automation industry Advantech has four operating divisions, these being Industrial Automation, Network Computing, Embedded Computing and Web Appliances. Revenue for financial 2001 was in the region of US$ 300 million with $63 million of this being from the industrial automation product range. Advantech was listed on the Taiwanese stock exchange during 1999. More than 29% of 2001 sales were made in North America with some 23% in Europe, an indication of the global nature of the business.
As for ProMicro it has continued to grow in the footsteps of its principal, and has remained successful through focussing on that exclusive product range. The only exception to this is in EPROM programmers (a dying business today in South Africa) where ProMicro can also supply product from the US company Needham. The staff complement of ProMicro has grown to five, and despite the general slump in the local manufacturing industry, the companies rand turnover is still increasing year on year. With its centralised Johannesburg operations and its goal of personal customer service, General Manager Elton Prytz believes that ProMicro is now just 'right-sized'.
The early customers for the range of ProMicro products were in the then thriving defence industry, amongst these being TekLogic (now ADS), Kentron, CSIR's Aerotek, AEC (now NECSA) and the universities doing research work for this industry. Today, the major business for ProMicro lies in the general industrial sphere, although there may be a resurgence of interest from local companies acting as partners in the major acquisition programme for the SANDF.
Product range
Before reviewing the extensive product range offered by Advantech it is useful to refer to the statement made by the Chairman and CEO of the company in the 21st issue of its comprehensive catalogue. He said, "Web technologies will dominate the industrial factory floors as has happened in offices and homes. The Ethernet will become the most popular standard of industrial fieldbus. Lots of front-end devices will be equipped with embedded CPU and web browser functions." It is in response to this vision statement that Advantech Automation has identified the future of industrial automation and is evolving its business practices to proactively match these trends.
The Automation catalogue lists more than 400 products that together offer a total solution for web-enabled automation, including e-business information integration, remote data monitoring and realtime device linkage. Products offered include:
* Web-enabled automation appliances.
* Industrial PCs and workstations.
* Touch panel computers and human-machine-interfaces.
* Industrial PC chassis and monitors.
* Automation software.
* Communication products.
* I/O devices.
* Remote data acquisition and control systems and modules.
* Plug-in data acquisition control cards.
* Single board computers and peripherals (including solid state disks).
Amongst the many products recently introduced is the WebLink 2000 series of devices which extract realtime data from plant floor systems through RS232/485, Ethernet or fieldbus communication, aggregate this into a web server, transform it into business information and then distribute it to authorised users through a standard web browser. Advantech has also released an extensive range of wireless LAN (WLAN) products allowing industry to expand its Ethernet without wiring costs, or to extend into areas where wiring is not possible.
While Advantech is certified to both the ISO 9001 quality management standard and the ISO 14001 environmental management standard, it also operates its own closed loop quality assurance system which addresses design, manufacturing and the customer, the latter in terms of service quality and complaints handling. Feedback from customers initiates co-ordination between R&D and manufacturing to continue the inertia of fast response to customer problems. Advantech also makes widespread use of approved third party laboratories to obtain internationally recognised approvals such as UL, CE and FCC.
The supply route
The products supplied by ProMicro from Advantech are all mature and easily installed by the customers themselves. This is one of the reasons that ProMicro operates from its Johannesburg base, as direct customer support is largely unnecessary. Most sales are effected through the customer referring to the up-to-date hard copy catalogues (regularly mailed by ProMicro) or the on-line version at the Advantech web site ( www.advantech.com). A short telephonic discussion with the technical experts at ProMicro can solve the minor problems and optimise the solution for the customer. As for delivery, ProMicro holds about eight weeks stock of the faster moving items that can be couriered anywhere in the country within 24 hours. For more unusual requests Advantech has implemented its own business-to-business solution to which ProMicro has access. It can immediately be checked whether the item is in stock in Taiwan or has to be ordered and the order can also be placed electronically. With the frequent flights between South Africa and the Far East, delivery can usually be effected within a week.
Installation problems are very rare and when they do occur are usually the result of a configuration error that again can be resolved telephonically. Advantech themselves also provide full technical details and assistance on-line. This e-service system integrates many of the company's databases and provides manuals, technical documents and trouble shooting guides 24 h a day.
The current market
With its staff of five, ProMicro serves a large, and growing, number of customers in South African industry. General industrial areas in which the company is involved include food and beverage, iron and steel, power generation and mining. Some of the more unusual applications involve point-of-sale weighing and the monitoring and control of irrigation and automatic fertilisation systems. While the whole range of Advantech products are supplied into local industry, the most common purchases are industrial PCs, PC-based data acquisition systems and touchscreen displays/monitors. ProMicro is also responsible for sales into the rest of southern Africa and the company has been successful in a number of countries including Namibia, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Tanzania.
While the recent battering of the rand will affect all importers, Elton believes that customers will continue to buy the state-of-the-art and reliable solutions from Advantech. He already has a long list of potential clients and while their ultimate desires might be tempered by the weak currency, a continued increase in rand value sales is still expected.
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