ABB User Conference, part two
The rush to China is losing steam and the North American market is looking better to process control companies. At least that's the way it's beginning to look to me after interviewing several industry leaders. Dineash Paliwal, head of group North American operations and leader of the global automation business for ABB, told a group of assembled editors during the conference Thursday that the company is targeting North America as a key market for continued corporate growth.
Joining Paliwal were North American business area managers Roger Bailey (Process Automation), Greg Scheu (Automation Products and Bo Elisson (Manufacturing Automation). While acknowledging the two-year-old turnaround in business, the group noted that moving the company's broad and diverse product base to modern technology is a most important objective. "With the majority or projects being brownfield these days," said Paliwal, "our large installed base is a key strength."
Paliwal laid out ABB North America's strategy as:
Securing core business
Leveraging and enhancing installed base with performance-based services
Accelerating deployment of automation
Developing new partner channels
Focusing on key accounts.
Performance in 2004 was very good with a 21 percent growth in orders versus an industry average of 3 to 4 percent. (As an aside, the industry average numbers cited are from ARC Advisory Group. Since every major player has been citing growth larger than the average, we're left feeling as if we're in Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keiller's fictional hometown in Minnesota where "all the kids are above average." Paliwal's response to that analysis is that the ARC numbers are across the entire industry, while each company's growth comes primarily from segments within it.)
The Gary observation is that the leadership team looks and acts like a real team. It is also smaller with more streamlined responsibilities than that of a few years ago. That is a plus, in my book. It breeds less confusion (and politics, for that matter) and more accountability. Overall I believe ABB to be well positioned for the future. Challenges remain in integrating all the parts, but great strides have been made.
Yesterday's post reported the keynote address by ABB Group CEO Fred Kindle. Another keynote that opened the conference was given by Dow Vice President of Engineering Margret Walker. ABB and Dow embarked a few years ago on a strategic partnership. Dow had developed its own process control system beginning over 20 years ago, but found it hard to sustain continued development. It recognized that it needed to leverage commercially available technology while maintaining the core functions--especially safety--that had led it to develop its own in the first place. Walker talked about how to work a collaborative partnership from the time after the technical details were determined.
Technology must be there, she told the more than 1,000 attendees, or the collaboration can't even start. But, it was the relationship that developed between the companies that allowed the project to be real. "Relationship drives sustainable results," was the Walker dictum. And just what makes a relationship successful? Just like marriage, family or any other relationships, there are five pillars:
Time and energy
Shared vision
Trust
Communication
Conflict resolution
Automation World's Associate Publisher Jim Powers, who was sitting beside me to make sure that I took notes ;-} loved this list, but he especially liked the description of how Dow and ABB arrived at a shared vision. The first meeting involved about 90 people from the two companies. Walker laid down the following ground rules: no chairs, no tables, no PowerPoints (she used none for her speech, either--Bravo), flip chart paper and the kind of markers that smell good. People were given 15 minutes to draw a picture of what the shared vision would look like--no talking allowed. Then each briefly explained the pictures.
The cool thing? They didn't throw the pictures out after the meeting, but instead laminated them. They were posted for each subsequent meeting to serve as a constant reminder of the goal of the undertaking.
The result so far seems to be a shining example of how two companies can work together not only for their own good, but for the betterment of the industry as well.
10:45:11 PM 
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