ARC sees global growth in automation market

Discrete industry automation continues to experience solid worldwide growth as manufacturing plants and OEM machine builders continue to invest in automation to improve agility and flexibility of operations to meet market demands. The worldwide market for discrete automation systems is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 6.8% over the next five years. The market was nearly $17 billion in 2006 and is forecasted to grow to over $23 billion in 2011, according to a new ARC Advisory Group study.

Globalization will be the focus of the ARC Advisory Groups’s 12th Annual Orlando Forum, “Winning Strategies and Best Practices for Global Manufacturers.” The event will be Feb. 4-7 at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, FL. Plant Engineering is a media sponsor of the ARC Forum.

The event will feature a series of manufacturer-only sessions on Monday, Feb. 4, focusing on service-oriented architecture, benchmarking for automation and control systems and for plant performance systems, and for discrete manufacturers. Two days of knowledge-based seminars follow, with speakers from industry-leading companies such as Chevron, Honeywell Automation, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Yokogawa and ABB.

Automation is a ticket to be a participant in this flat world. “One reason the automation business is doing so well today is the huge list of challenges and changing conditions in the global business environment that manufacturers must respond to. These challenges include globalization, the need to react quickly and with agility to emerging market opportunities, and increasing pressure to improve financial performance,” according to Senior Analyst Himanshu Shah (hshah@arcweb.com), the principal author of ARC’s report, “Automation Systems for Discrete Industries Worldwide Outlook.”

Countries like China and India have been traditionally viewed as a location for outsourcing low valued production from countries in North America and Europe. However, there are indications that India and China are slowly moving toward value added manufacturing services that are producing much higher valued products. Specifically, ARC sees a move toward foreign domestic machine builders establishing production centers in the Asian market to leverage the increasing vertical specialization that is expanding in industrial machinery.