This report employs a balanced scorecard approach to identify the practices that contribute to excellence in warehouse management. A well-run warehouse is productive, safe, contributes to high customer service, and develops the skills of its purpose. It is tough to perform well in all these dimensions. In our survey, only 17 percent of respondents worked in warehouses that performed well across the board.
Overall, automation suppliers saw their revenues drop by 1.7 percent during the first quarter of 2017. Depressed oil and commodity prices continued to hamper growth prospects in the worldwide automation market. However, order activity improved somewhat, particularly for discrete automation suppliers.
Process automation suppliers continue to suffer most from exposure to low oil prices, though many have been able to stem revenue declines by shifting from major capital projects to MRO activities.
In his opening remarks at ARC Advisory Group’s recent Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida, ARC President, Andy Chatha, commented that digital transformation demands that engineering technology (ET) be included in the IT/OT convergence story as the importance of integrating product and process design increases. (ARC defines ET as those technologies that comprise digital models). Mr.
Technology is changing, and fast. Labor availability and skillset requirements are changing as well. In the process industries, process control personnel makeup and skillsets have evolved over decades of iterations. At the 2017 ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, ARC Advisory Group hosted a session in which three end users discussed their respective companies’ process control roles, challenges, and possible responses to those challenges.
Cost-effective cybersecurity remains a pain point and challenge for industrial control system installations. The more critical the plant or infrastructure operated by a control system, the greater resources and attention are lavished on its cybersecurity. Likewise, cybersecurity is often cited as the leading barrier to growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Unfortunately, there has been little fundamental improvement in the nature of internet protocol (IP) communication.
As new open process automation systems are developed and commercialized, manufacturing companies, automation suppliers, and engineering contractors face both the opportunity and challenge of developing new approaches to automation projects. Advances in automation technologies create new opportunities for all stakeholders to lower both the replacement and ongoing lifecycle costs for their control systems and derive more value from automation investments.