Automated instrumentation refers to the general term for equipment or systems that can automatically complete functions such as information detection, signal conversion, data processing, logical judgment, and control instruction output in the fields of industrial production, scientific research, and people’s livelihood security.
As the manufacturing industry transforms towards high-end, intelligent, and green, the demand for high-precision, intelligent automated instruments and meters continues to grow, especially in emerging fields such as new energy and biomedicine. The demand for customized, high-reliability instruments and meters has grown significantly, becoming one of the core driving forces for industry demand growth.
However, in the past two years, the development of my country’s automation instrumentation industry has faced the challenge of structural demand imbalance.
On the one hand, demand in core traditional downstream markets such as petrochemicals continues to shrink, which is a significant drag on the scale of the industry; on the other hand, emerging fields such as silicon materials and lithium batteries have considerable demand potential, but have not yet fully released their growth potential, and their increments cannot offset the decline in demand in traditional industries, resulting in a decline in the overall market size of the industry.
According to statistics, the market size of my country’s automated instrumentation industry will drop to 25.8 billion yuan in 2025, of which flow instruments account for approximately 35.8%, pressure instruments account for approximately 27.2%, temperature instruments account for approximately 13.6%, analytical instruments account for approximately 13.6%, and level instruments account for approximately 9.8%.
The development history of my country’s automated instrumentation industry is a history of industrial evolution from technology introduction to independent innovation, from state-owned enterprise dominance to diversified competition, and from a single product to a system solution.
Its context can be clearly divided into five key stages: the start-up foundation period, the open exploration period, the market transformation period, the innovation breakthrough period and the high-quality development period. Each stage presents distinct characteristics of the times and development priorities.
Automated instrumentation is the core component of industrial automation systems and the basic hardware carrier in fields such as intelligent manufacturing and industrial Internet.
Therefore, my country attaches great importance to the development of the automated instrumentation industry and has successively issued a series of policies such as the “Action Plan for the Development of New Productivity in the Metrology Support Industry (2025-2030)” and “Opinions on the Development of Metrology Innovation in the Manufacturing Industry” to support, encourage and standardize the development of the industry. At the same time, it has strengthened its integration with international standards and enhanced the recognition of domestic automated instruments in the international market.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, the upstream of the automation instrumentation industry mainly includes basic material suppliers such as special metals, engineering plastics, optical components, and core component suppliers such as sensor chips, MEMS devices, controllers, and actuators; the midstream of the industry is automated instrumentation manufacturers; the downstream of the industry is the application market, covering many fields such as petroleum, chemical industry, municipal administration, food, pharmaceuticals, electric power, metallurgy, etc.
my country’s automated instrumentation market has formed a pyramid competition pattern in which “foreign capital dominates the high-end market, local companies rise in the mid-range market, and small and medium-sized enterprises fill the segmented tracks”.
Leading international companies, represented by E+H and Emerson, occupy a dominant position in my country’s high-end automation instrumentation field by virtue of their comprehensive advantages such as core technical barriers, long-term brand accumulation, full life cycle service capabilities and global supply chain systems.
As the high-end field has extremely high requirements for product accuracy, stability, reliability and after-sales service, foreign-funded enterprises have accumulated competitive advantages that are difficult to replicate in the short term through decades of technological iterations. Their brand reputation has formed a strong trust barrier among customers in key industries such as industrial manufacturing, energy and chemicals.
According to statistics, E+H ranks first in the industry with a market share of 15% in 2024, followed by Emerson, with a market share of approximately 14%.
Relevant listed companies such as Chongqing Sichuan Instrument Automation Co., Ltd. are mainly engaged in industrial automatic control system devices and engineering complete sets, including intelligent actuators, intelligent transmitters, intelligent regulating valves, intelligent flow meters, temperature meters, level meters, control equipment and devices, analytical instruments and other major categories of individual products as well as system integration and general contracting services.
In the first half of 2025, the total operating revenue of Sichuan Instrument Co., Ltd. has reached 3.281 billion yuan, of which the industrial automation instrument and device business revenue is 2.849 billion yuan, accounting for 86.83% of the total operating revenue.
In the future, automated instrumentation will accelerate the deep integration with new generation information technologies such as artificial intelligence, edge computing, and industrial Internet of Things, realizing the transformation from traditional data collection terminals to intelligent decision-making nodes.
Products will generally have intelligent functions such as self-diagnosis, self-calibration, and predictive maintenance. They will be equipped with advanced algorithms to achieve accurate perception and dynamic control of industrial process parameters.
At the same time, the application of digital twin technology will promote the virtual mapping of instruments and industrial production systems, assist the full-link visual management and control of the production process, and further enhance the intelligent level of industrial production.
