Control.com - Nerds in Control

I just wanna know how reliable the GE FANUC PLC is when compared to AB, Siemens & Mitsubushi. Could anyone just help me out?

That is like answering which kind of vehicle is best Ford, Chevy, Dodge, you will get varied OPINIONS.

How much experience do you have? How many spare parts? What is the skill set of your technicians/engineers?

They are all easy if you like them and use them enough. :)

Can someone out there tell me, should I vacation in Cancun, Cozumel, Ixtapa, Puerto Vallarta or Hawaii?

Sorry, you will get nothing but opinions when it comes to the big 3 or 4 players...

Dave Ferguson

I suspect they are all similar in reliability.

Seems comparable from all that I've seen.

Regards

cww

All are Good...

-->Check your Budget and look which fits best according to your budget.
-->Check which company has good local in-person support available in your area since last 10-20 years & likely to continue their business in your area.

Regards,

A PLC Programmer

I am not sure that the same distributor having a line for 10 or 20 years is all that meaningful anymore. A lot of distributors have had their lines taken away by the PLC manufacturers of late. It does seem like both Siemens and GE are going in the direction of AB's highly successful distribution/support model, which should make things rather stable.

All of the major manufacturers, and most of the lesser manfucturers, all have great quality.

You will likely be buying your purchase from a system integrator, so that's where you should be looking for value. It's been said before here: It's about the service, knowledge, and experience of the provider. You won't go wrong with hardware, or even sofware, from any of the manufacturers you named. The unknown is the experience of the programmer, and ther knowledge they have of your application and needs, as well as the service they will provide.

You'd do much better spending your time and effort investigating the references of those you will be buying your PLC from, especially if they will performing any of the application/programming. It's not an easy or fun thing to do, but you'll have a much better idea of how your system will perform, and how your supplier will perform.

Think about the whole project: not just the hardware.

And, don't forget about the operator interface. Many a great application has been ruined by a poor HMI; and many a less than stellar application has overcome initial problems because of a robust and user-friendly operator interface application.

Consider the whole, not just individual pieces.

Now, if you've had problems of a quality nature from one PLC manufacturer or another, that could be due to problems with the hardware, or, more likely, it's due to installation, configuration or application problems.

As with most control equipment the general rule of thumb is you get what you pay for, so depending on the reliability you require and the availability of technical support/spare parts should determine the brand of PLC you require.

That said, the GE FANUC configuration program is well documented and with some research and practice can be user friendly. In my experience it hasn't had any more reliability issues than an AB, etc. PLC so once again the issue comes back to availability of spares in the event of a module failure, etc.