Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Process control business No posts yesterday. I drove up to Chicago for a meeting and had to get a bunch of stuff done for our June issue before heading out to the Marriott O'Hare and the opening reception for our Packaging Automation Forum. That's where I'll be today--I'm on stage as moderator of the afternoon session. We increased capacity by 60 seats this year for the second edition and sold it out again. There's a lot of interest in that area. The meeting was with the Rockwell Automation process systems team. Rick Dolezal, Scott Anthony and Mike Vernak (along with Karen Leinberger from the always professional agency-Padilla Speer Beardsley) stopped in to update us on how business is going. I guess in a word, it's "well." I've watched Rockwell's move into the process side of the business for at least 17 years. It probably takes a large organization time to feel out different alternatives--for several years it maintained a relationship with Honeywell such that for several years, say from 1997-1999, the rumors were persistent and pervasive regarding a Rockwell purchase of the Honeywell process business. What has actually happened is that just a few years ago, Rockwell management decided that the time and technology were ripe to just jump in and do it right. The Logix platform gave them the tools to do process and machine control on the same platform with the same engineering tool. Then they decided they couldn't operate a serious business with only a few people, so they hired from the process competitors. Don't buy Honeywell, just hire a bunch of its people. They've also picked up experienced people from Emerson and Bailey (now ABB). So Rockwell has put the pieces in place including a migration path for moving legacy DCS systems to the ControlLogix PAC platform. Now, they just have to train and motivate the sales force and channel... Of course, soccer always comes up. Turns out Scott has probably seen me referee twice. He now coaches at Case Western Reserve. I've worked a Case game at Ohio Northern but fortunately he doesn't remember that one. Sounds like he caught me doing the 2001 boys state final match in Columbus--fortunately one of my few good ones ;-) Back to process control. Competition is fierce there. Customers are tending to pick a supplier to work with for a long time. It will be interesting for us observers to watch how the market shakes out for the technology providers. Rockwell, Siemens and GE Fanuc (who hired two people from Rockwell to reinvigorate its process thrust just sent out a press release saying they are still working on their updated solution and are on target for delivery) all are looking to leverage their discrete strengths into process areas that would be complementary. Emerson remains strong on the process side with Yokogawa going all out to achieve market share growth. ABB has been consolidating all the platforms it purchased with its 800xA platform and remains strong. Siemens perhaps had a setback with how it integrated the Moore acquisition, but seems back on track as a formidable player worldwide. Invensys and Honeywell don't seem to be yielding ground. But that's a lot of players. Industry insiders are betting on consolidation. But no one has given me any hot tips on who will consolidate whom. But, since I don't run a rumor blog, send your hot tips to someone else. 8:01:21 AM    comment []

Mobile solutions Mobile solutions have been around for a while now--your friendly local UPS or FedEx guy has had a mobile device for several years. I'm seeing more and more geared toward various service and operations people in manufacturing. Transpara started up last year. Now, I've just received a release from a company I didn't know--Click Software. Has a solution for companies with mobile service technicians. Its latest product is actually for the desktop at the mother ship. ClickAnalyze provides operational reports and a drill-down dashboard of KPIs. Its products are geared specifically to just the mobile market. 7:22:47 AM    comment []