Increasing Complexity Emerges as Common Automation Challenge for End Users

Once again, several sessions at this year's ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida focused on the ongoing automation challenges facing end users across a variety of industrial sectors. Several common challenges emerged during these sessions. These included both the need to manage increasing complexity, and the need to effectively communicate the benefits that automation provides to the business stakeholders; particularly the ones that make the decisions associated with major capital investments.

While the business and production objectives vary greatly among these companies, the diversity of automation technologies utilized emerged as a common challenge. Some of this diversity relates to the variety of process operations – discrete automation vs. process automation – but some of the diversity relates to having to manage multiple generations of automation, often implemented over decades of plant operations.

While the automation professionals in attendance never themselves questioned the value created by the automation deployed, the presenters all reinforced that stakeholders outside the company's automation community need to be exposed to the value, since this is often not well understood and/or taken for granted. As a result, the automation community needs to have a plan to communicate the business value to all stakeholders.

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Keywords: Automation, Integration, Standards, Collaboration, Smart Manufacturing, Business Value, Simulation, Cyber Security, ARC Advisory Group.