The industrial operator panel market is undergoing a fundamental change. New COTS technology coming from the consumer market will alter the products significantly. In recent years, suppliers started to change their offering towards widescreen and dual/multi-touch panels.
Based on the current trend, text-based and semi-graphical panels will slowly disappear and the share of panels without touch displays will decrease. “The coming years will be very challenging for suppliers. Technological change in a market that is maturing, but only experiencing moderate growth, will create friction,” according to Florian Güldner, the principal author of ARC’s “Operator Panel Global Market Research Study”.
Multi-touch: A Real Opportunity?
ARC research indicates that multi-touch is one of the big technology trends in the operator panel market. However, in practical terms, multi-touch is not ideal for many factory applications, where dual-touch (zoom) or single-touch (swipe) user interfaces currently dominate.
To meet its full potential in operator panels, multi-touch technology must be combined with the right hardware and software to provide the needed functionality and intuitiveness, while minimizing the opportunities for costly (and often dangerous) operator errors.
Industrie 4.0 and the IIoT Will Impact Technology
Over the study forecast period, new manufacturing approaches will impact the operator panel market. Industrie 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will get traction in many markets, introducing a new paradigm for manufacturers.
To accommodate these profound changes, operator panel suppliers will need to focus increasingly on connectivity and data collection. Many panels will become the link between the office space and the plant floor. Production modularization will also require more applications to be monitored and controlled directly and autonomously, instead of being coordinated from a central control room. This will contribute further to growth, but will require suppliers to incorporate new features into their operator panels.
Can North America Sustain Growth?
North America is currently among the fastest-growing regions for operator panels, due largely to the current boom in upstream oil & gas activity and related downstream activities spurred by the current drop in feedstock costs. However, the depressed oil and gas prices make it questionable whether all this activity will continue over the forecast period.
With its large consumer market and growing population, North America will continue to be a growth market, but not large enough to drive operator panel demand on a global level.
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