Since its foundation in 1964, VAT has been entirely specialized in vacuum valve technology. Maintaining this strong focus has allowed VAT to develop and maintain a leading market position. Its main applications are the semiconductor industries, flat panels, solar and photovoltaic cells.

“VAT has a very strong position in its specific markets. Our customers are machine manufacturers, but the users of our products are the main semiconductor manufacturers in the world,” explains Ronald Pschenitschnigg, Head of Business Unit Control Valves.“

CC-Link needed

“CC-Link implementation was a very strong selling argument in Japan and Korea. Very often, Mitsubishi PLCs are implemented and so we needed to find a solution to interface with CC-Link. China is also increasingly using this standard. For the vacuum control valve, we are the only group on the market to offer a CC-Link interface” Pschenitschnigg adds.

VAT had to find a solution to implement CC-Link on their control valves and studied the different offers on the market: “We chose HMS because of the number of supported fieldbuses, the ability to provide a CC-Link module as a standard product and finally the size of the company which offers us some guarantees,” explains Reto Kaufmann at VAT.