"New Automation Technology"
German family-owned maker of PC-based control, EtherCAT and TwinCAT, and of ATRO, a modular robot customers assemble from motor and link modules.
Beckhoff Automation GmbH & Co. KG is a German automation manufacturer at Hulshorstweg 20, 33415 Verl, North Rhine-Westphalia. Hans Beckhoff founded it in 1980 out of the family electrical business Elektro Beckhoff, started by his parents in 1953. It remains family-owned and owner-managed, with no outside equity, and Hans Beckhoff is still managing director. As of February 2026 it employed 5,450 people including 2,000 engineers, 116 apprentices and 110 work-study students, and it reported EUR 1.24 billion of revenue for 2025, up 6 per cent, on research and development spending of EUR 80 million. It operates 23 branches in Germany and 41 subsidiaries and representative offices abroad, selling into more than 75 countries, and reports average annual growth of about 13 per cent since 2000.
The company's premise is that a standard industrial PC, rather than a proprietary PLC, should run the machine. Everything else follows from that. Its hardware lines are C-series industrial PCs; EL and EP series EtherCAT I/O terminals; AM servo motors and AX servo drives; the MX-System, which replaces the control cabinet with pluggable modules mounted on the machine; machine vision cameras and lighting; and two magnetic transport systems, the XTS linear track with independently controlled movers and XPlanar, whose movers float on a tiled surface with six degrees of freedom. TwinCAT, introduced in 1996 and now at version 3, is the real-time software layer that runs PLC, motion, CNC, safety, vision and machine learning on the same processor. EtherCAT, which Beckhoff invented in 2003, is the real-time Ethernet fieldbus underneath; it became IEC 61158 in 2007 and is now maintained by the EtherCAT Technology Group rather than by Beckhoff alone. The first Bus Terminal, in 1995, was co-developed with WAGO.
Two things make the company directly relevant to robotics rather than adjacent to it. The first is TwinCAT Kinematic Transformation, which lets the same controller run standard robot geometries - delta, SCARA and six-axis articulated arms - as motion axes, so a machine builder can drive a robot without a separate robot controller. The second is ATRO, Automation Technology for Robotics, launched on 12 July 2022. ATRO is a modular robot the customer assembles: active motor modules in the RM series, passive link modules in the RL series, base modules in the RB series and system modules in the RS series that terminate at an ISO tool flange. Modules come in five power sizes and in straight or angled form, and are combined into whatever axis count the task needs rather than bought as a fixed arm. Payload reaches 10 kg and maximum reach 1.3 m. Power, data, compressed air, vacuum and water all run inside the modules, so every axis and the tool can rotate without limit and without external cable loops. TwinCAT scans the assembled structure, generates the control application and a digital twin from it, and one industrial PC can run several ATRO robots over EtherCAT.
End markets named by the company include packaging, robotics, semiconductor, printing, wind energy and building automation. The customer base is machine builders and OEMs rather than end users, which is the position the company occupies in the robotics supply chain: it supplies the controller, drives, fieldbus and, with ATRO, the mechanical arm itself, to firms that build the machine around it.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
PC-based real-time automation platform integrating PLC, NC, CNC, robotics, and HMI on Windows-based industrial PCs.
Modular EtherCAT I/O terminals providing ultra-fast, deterministic industrial fieldbus communication in compact terminal block format.
Linear multi-mover transport system with individually controlled movers on a closed-loop track for flexible production line layouts.
Contact Beckhoff Automation GmbH
WEBSITE
https://www.beckhoff.comPHONE
+49 5246 963-0HEADQUARTERS
Germany
Company Facts
Founded
1980
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Europe
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
-
Funding Total
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Certifications & Memberships
