Capitalising on an increasingly competitive marketplace to control costs

However, as the vast majority of components used by panel and equipment builders in the UK are manufactured outside of the UK – often by leading European and US brands – there is upward pressure on the cost of
components.

This combination of upward price movement and a dash of short-sightedness from leading manufacturers is working to the benefit of organisations buying these products, as the result is an increase in price-fighting brands gaining ground in the UK
OEM and panel building market.
This is particularly true in bread and butter panel build component areas such as DIN Rail terminals, DIN Rail power supplies – as virtually every panel has one and they are fast becoming a commodity
component – and pushbuttons. Even component areas where panel builders may traditionally have played it safe with well-known brand products are under attack, with the emergence of increasingly well-engineered component entrants from the Far East. One only has to
travel around tradeshows across the UK and Europe to see the increase in Chinese and Korean manufacturers offering high performance, industry standard alternatives to higher complexity components such as sensors, HMIs and inverter drives.

Read the full article in the December issue of DPA