China is already the most important market for automation products: in 2013, the country overtook Japan as the largest sales market for robots. At the same time, China still has an extremely low level of automation, according to the consulting firm STM. The proportion of machine tools with NC control in China is roughly on a par with Japan at the end of the 1970s. The degree of readiness of company software (PLM, ERP and MES) is still very low at 60%.