Thursday, December 20, 2007

Growing markets Manufacturing industry analyst firm ARC Advisory Group has released the results of a couple of research projects recently. According to ARC, process industry automation continues to experience worldwide growth. "End users facing globalization are driving plant performance at a level that would be inconceivable without modern process automation systems and business processes. As a result, automation systems for process industries will experience healthy growth.  The worldwide market for process automation systems is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6 percent over the next five years. The market was nearly $30 billion in 2006 and is forecast to grow to over $47 billion in 2011." Senior analyst Himanshu Shah is the principal author of "Automation systems for Process Industries Worldwide Outlook." Meanwhile in another report, discrete industry automation also 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 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.8 percent over the next five years. The market was nearly $17 billion in 2006 and is forecasted to grow to over $23 billion in 2011." Senior Analyst Himanshu Shah was also the principal author of this report, "Automation Systems for Discrete Industries Worldwide Outlook." 9:27:50 PM    comment []