The development of inverters first started in the early 1960's. Today, after over 50 years of development, the global market for inverters reached US$11.8 billion in 2012, with a compound annual growth rate of around 7.8%. This comes from compact product design, application expansion, a global focus on energy savings, industrial automation requirement growth, and the appearance of large emerging markets.
In general, an inverter is an important contributor to social development, quality of life improvements and energy savings. Delta's first inverter, which is also known as an AC motor drive, was launched in 1995 and it was rapidly acknowledged by the markets for its cost-effectiveness.
Under the leadership of Mr. Gavin Chang, the general manager of Delta's Motor Drive System Business Unit (MDSBU), Delta's development work has been on functions, reliability and applications for AC motor drives. For now, Delta's AC motor drives are widely accepted and strongly supported by global customers, especially in the middle and low end industrial machinery sectors.
In Taiwan and in China, Delta's AC motor drives hold a significant market share. According to the market research of MIR and GongKong, Delta's AC motor drive has the 4th largest market share in China, slightly behind the 3rd largest.
Reorganization for Self-elevation
In 2013, Delta's ACMD Division was upgraded to MDSBU as Delta's Industrial Automation Business Unit officially became the Industrial Automation Business Group (IABG). Gavin thus had a new arrangement for both organization and product development strategy.
"To fulfill the needs of customers and customization, our product teams are divided into three divisions including large power AC motor drives, small power AC motor drives and industry development. We have also established a technology development department," said Gavin. He pointed out that this adjustment would help self upgrades and future sales.
The MDSBU focuses on product quality by merging product verification, service and quality assurance teams. Gavin indicated that the MDSBU is now able to conduct product verification to assure better quality, and the service team conducts design quality evaluation to increase service quality. "Through the reorganization, we will improve product development efficiency, product quality and service," said Gavin.
Future Development
Gavin recalled inverter's development path over the past decade and analyzed three main market trends:
‧Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) of international companies:
Facing competition in production and price in the global markets, many international companies have started to merge with small ones that provide side products or systems, such as controllers, inverters, motors, and other related systems. This helps to maintain their competitiveness, obtain more sales channels, gain more investment for software development and expand company scale. In the future, big companies will be the main trend, while small ones will only survive in niche markets.
‧Intelligent lead developments:
As the core components of MCU and IBGT became more and more advanced, the control technology keeps progressing. Motor control technology is the main trend for all inverter suppliers, targeting high precision, high speed response, intelligence with self-diagnosis ability and motor parameter adjustment, PM motor control and energy-saving control technology, braking energy regeneration and PFC control, low noise and low electromagnetic interference, and more. In the future, inverters will be promoted with cost-effective, maintenance-free and user-friendly HMI and high-speed industrial network systems.
‧Industry-specific AC motor drives for various applications:
Currently, most inverters are designed with functions for most applications. However, the market need for general type inverters is nearly saturated. Meanwhile, as all industries pursue higher performance and better process control, the markets are requiring more industry-specific inverters. For example, integrated elevator drives are becoming more and more popular in the markets of China.
For new market and product strategies, Gavin says, "We will keep emphasizing target industries, such as cranes, elevators, rubber and plastic, textile and machine tools. For now, the MDSBU is promoting power quality products and solutions for harmonics suppression and power factor compensation. This helps customers improve power efficiency for energy savings. On the other hand, the new task for us is to move towards high-end applications. The MDSBU will develop system integration channels for direct domain know-how to build up integrated solutions in the near future."
Reviews 2013 for a Better 2014
At the end of the interview Gavin reviewed 2013: "Thanks to all the team members of MDSBU, we reached a two-digit growth in 2013 which was better than 2012." He pointed out the quality of the C family of AC motor drives (including C2000, C200, CP2000, CH2000, CT2000 Series) has been greatly improved. For this, the MDSBU has received positive feedback from customers and it is considering entering various other industries.
For 2014, Gavin plans to keep improving product quality and build a complete product verification and system testing platform. Gavin said with confidence, "Product quality improvement is our priority in 2014. Of course, we'll also continue to enhance product performance and control for better in-depth industry development. We expect even larger growth in 2014, and we are targeting becoming a top ten international AC motor drive supplier in 2015."