The absolute leadership of the four major families in the field of robotics comes from the business first-mover advantage and the entire industry chain layout advantage.

Investigate the development process of the four major families, and engage in the business related to the robot industry chain in the early days. Although the starting business and development path are different, the whole value chain business from application development, front-end sales, system integration to customer service is finally realized. mode.

Analyze the formation path of the four major family industry chains and divide them into the following two ways:

Top-down development path:

Among the four families, Fanuc, Yaskawa and ABB adopted a top-down development path, and initially deepened the parts and components field, and later expanded to the robot body and downstream integration applications.

Fanuc started with CNC system; Yaskawa focused on servo and inverter; ABB motion control technology is leading in the industry.

In the latter period, the three giants' ontology and solutions were promoted simultaneously. The layout method was mainly cooperation or acquisition, and the layout field was mainly high-end application vehicles and 3C industries.

According to the company's official website, ABB acquired Gomtec Plus Cooperative Robotics in 2015, acquired Swedish system integration company SVIA in 2016, acquired B&R and GE Industrial Systems business in 2017; Yaskawa and Beijing Oriental in 2015 sandblasted and painted In the field of robotics, the company cooperated with NINE to create a high-end market for robotic laser applications. In 2014, FANUC signed a cooperation agreement with Rockwell to achieve seamless integrated manufacturing. In 2016, the company collaborated with Kohler Group to lead the intelligent manufacturing of the sanitary industry.

Bottom-up path:

Different from the growth paths of the other three, KUKA started from the welding equipment, and integrated the downstream automotive system system into the entrance, to the body manufacturing, and then to the later controller and servo motor, and implemented a downstream system integration to the upstream. The reverse industry chain integration layout model for core component expansion.

At the business level, unlike ABB's involvement in the electrical grid, FANUC's involvement in CNC machine tools, Yaskawa's involvement in motors and other industrial equipment, KUKA is the only company among the four companies whose entire business is concentrated in the field of industrial robotics.

According to the company's financial report, in 2017, KUKA system integration business accounted for 45.4% of revenue, robot body accounted for 34.5%, and Rui Shige and KUKA produced good synergy, and the revenue ratio increased steadily to 22%.

In 2017, KUKA was acquired by Midea, which increased its expansion in the Chinese market.

The advantages of downstream reverse expansion are:

1) Extensive contact with downstream customers to understand the actual needs of end users. KUKA benefited from the prosperity of the German automotive industry and gradually expanded from the provision of system integration services to ontologies;

2) KUKA leverages its expertise in the automotive industry to provide solutions for R&D automation in other areas, such as in medical technology, solar industry and aerospace industries, which facilitates the advantages of bulk manufacturing and downstream integration. In 1985, KUKA removed the parallel link structure in industrial robots to achieve true multi-joint control and gradually became the default criterion for the robot industry.