According to the production process of electric water heater and the requirement of automatic production of the factory, a design scheme of turning automatic system of electric water heater was proposed based on KUKA industrial robot. The endeffector of the robot and the feeding line were designed, and the automatic control system of the turning of electric water heater with programmable logical controller (PLC) as the main controller was established. The communication between PLC and KUKA industrial robot was realized by using TCP/IP protocol. The communication between PLC and KUKA industrial robot was realized by using the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). The communication between feeding line and PLC was realized through I/O port.The program of the robot was developed by using KRLKUKA robot language, the screen networking system configuration between PLC and human machine interface (HMI) and the monitoring interface were designed by using TIA protal V11 software. The system has been applied in the assembly workshop of a certain electric water heater, which promotes the automation of the factory, improves the quality and production efficiency and reduces the heavy manual labor of workers. This system has a certain reference value in similar process and water heater manufacturing industry.