Process safety systems: Operational performance, compliance needs driving market growth

The market for industrial process safety systems is projected to more than double between 2006 and 2013, growing at a rate of 10.8 percent, reaching $2.1 billion, according to Cambridge, Mass.-based Frost & Sullivan.

By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff March 30, 2008

The market for industrial process safety systems is projected to more than double between 2006 and 2013, growing at a rate of 10.8 percent, reaching $2.1 billion, according to Cambridge, Mass.-based Frost & Sullivan . Much of the growth will be driven by new greenfield plants anticipated to come online between by 2013, but also by process manufacturers seeking to reduce costs and ensure greater uptime by improving process safety.The economic boom in Asia-Pacific will be a center much of the market growth.“A huge driver is that process automation is making big strides in the industry, reducing the need for large numbers of operators. Yet with fewer workers, there is still a great need to ensure safety,” says Muthuraman Ramasamy,” Frost & Sullivan research analyst. “This brings renewed focus on employee and plant safety to maximize all available assets and reduce overall costs.”Ensuring compliance and improving safety reduces costly downtime while positively impacting efficiency, productivity, and output, he adds.Companies are looking for vendors with sophisticated systems and specific industry domain expertise installing them. “They’re looking for systems with flexible architectures and open communication with existing systems,” as well as strong predictive diagnostics, says Ramasamy.The challenge to vendors is increased market education regarding the full range of benefit of newer safety systems.“There’s a tendency for some customers to live within a protective cocoon, believing that their legacy, homegrown systems will fully protect them,” Ramasamy says. The industry has an aging workforce that necessitates greater emphasis on process knowledge retention, putting the burden on vendors to understand the complexity of plant design requirements.