China Ministry of Railways to deploy Wonderware SCADA

May 19, 2009

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- Wonderware has announced that China's Ministry of Railways has selected Wonderware System Platform as the SCADA system to operate the country's national railway. The project will extend to 2020 and involves the automation of all power monitoring points for a majority of the Chinese railroad system and will feature 3 million I/O points.

The Wonderware SCADA project integrates a large part of the country's railway lines running from Beijing in the north to Guangzhou in the south. The project's estimated budget is approximately 3.5 trillion yuan (USD $512 billion). The China Ministry of Railways company expects a 6-year return on investment.

"When the China Railway system is completed it will carry both passengers and goods, reaching a distance of 4,000 kilometers in just a few hours," said Chen Qizhi, vice general manager of Chengdu Jiaoda Guangmang Industry, the Wonderware system integrator managing the project. "This is a big leap from the normal multi-day trip it takes right now and is indeed a huge improvement in our country's transportation system."

The initial rollout of Wonderware System Platform software involves approximately 100,000 I/O points. By the end of 2009, the SCADA solution will expand to 300,000 I/O points as more stations are added, and will increase to 1.5 million I/O points by 2010. It is expected that by the time the project is completed in 2020, the Wonderware SCADA solution will manage more than 3 million I/O points and will include the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railroad currently under construction.

The China Ministry of Railways' Wonderware SCADA system will be the largest-scale industrial project to date involving the Microsoft SQL Server platform. Wonderware has standardized its automation and control systems on Microsoft's industry-standard platforms, such as Microsoft SQL Server.