At ARC Advisory Group's thirteenth India Forum in Bangalore in July 2015, several supplier presentations focused on optimizing plant operations through process automation. Today's industrial business environment is more dynamic and challenging than ever. New technologies, such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), predictive analytics, cloud computing, and Industrie 4.0 will automate and unify production and business processes.
Automation suppliers saw their revenues drop by over 3 percent during the second quarter of 2015. The precipitous drop in oil prices and the strong dollar had a significant impact on growth for many process industry suppliers. Based on the corresponding drop in order activity, many suppliers have trimmed their expectations for business in the quarters ahead.
Potential migration toward an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) raises numerous questions regarding suitable architectural frameworks or reference architectures for use in these emerging ecosystems. Organizations such as the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), and the European IoT-A (Internet of Things – Architecture) project, among others, look to provide architectural frameworks that define relationships between IoT domains and devices, as well as appropriate security schemes.
The ISA99 committee on industrial automation and control systems (IACS) cybersecurity has primary responsibility for developing the ISA/IEC 62443 series of standards on this subject.
The committee recently held a series of working meetings in Frankfurt, Germany to assess the current status of the standards and confirm plans for future work. This included discussions related to several of the fundamental concepts that form the basis for the ISA 62443 series of standards.
As the "new normal," continued economic slowdown will have a negative effect on China's automation market for the next several years. Many asset owners will invest more carefully or even postpone or cancel capital projects. Industrial organizations in China are shifting the focus of their main activities from new project construction to operating, maintaining, and upgrading their existing assets. This creates tremendous opportunities for aftermarket automation service providers.
The second day of ARC Advisory Group's thirteenth India Forum, "Industry in Transition: The Information Driven Enterprise for the Connected World," continued with the same zeal and interest created on the first day. The forum provided the right platform and opportunity to network among end users, solution providers, and industry observers.
In a June 2015 Report to Congress, the US Department of Energy (DOE) stated that while steady progress has been made in the industrial sector to improve energy efficiency, there is room for improvement. According to the report, "There is potential to accelerate the rate of adopting energy efficient technologies and practices that could reduce energy consumption in the industrial sector by an additional 15 to 32 percent by 2025".
Water, a finite and rapidly depleting resource, is basic to life, the environment, and development. Water can pose a serious challenge to sustainable development if not managed efficiently and equitably. Water sustainability ensures a continuous supply of clean and potable water for living beings and helps maintain the ecological balance.
ARC Advisory Group's thirteenth India Forum for the process and discrete sectors, "Industry in Transition: The Information Driven Enterprise for the Connected World," from July 9-10, 2015 in Bangalore, India attracted over 300 delegates. This two-day forum was structured to share information, and provide end users, solution providers, and decision makers with an opportunity to network and understand the market requirements, from both the macro and micro perspectives.
Executive Overview
A company incurs capital expenditure (CapEx) - the capital utilized to buy fixed assets or to add to the value of existing fixed assets - to acquire or upgrade physical assets on plant and machinery, land and buildings, property, and such others. ARC Advisory Group captures CapEx in this report in two separate segments: based on the money spent on acquiring and upgrading total fixed assets; and on the money spent on acquiring and upgrading the plant and machinery.