The traditional approach to executing process automation system projects typically involves a high degree of customization, including custom engineering. It’s also rife with interdependencies between different engineering disciplines. But with the wide range of advanced technologies available today, many of the customization steps required to engineer a DCS project can now be automated, if not eliminated, and interdependencies between disciplines greatly reduced or simplified.

What do automation and embedded systems have in common? The short answer is: more and more. The annual Embedded World trade fair, held every winter in Nuremberg, Germany, has become the world’s largest show for the highly fragmented embedded community of suppliers, developers, and users. While the embedded market is fragmented into thousands of different application areas, the focus on automation has grown sharply in recent years as automation suppliers put more intelligence into their field devices. This Insight looks at some of the highlights observed by ARC analysts.

To paraphrase Stephen Elop, former CEO at Nokia: The advantages you enjoyed yesterday will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow.  While this applies for all industries, it is particularly relevant for participants in today’s global automotive industry. 

For many years, ARC Advisory Group has been looking into some of the key indicators used to measure the overall health of process manufacturing.  These include the impact of unplanned downtime on production, the age of the installed base of systems and their need for replacement, and the use of key performance metrics, like overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and replacement asset value (RAV). 

The next several years will bring about the “great digitization” of industry.  This will touch nearly every aspect of business as existing systems, jobs, and business processes are instrumented, redefined, and optimized with artificial intelligence.  This transformation will be widespread and far reaching.  Information technology (IT), operational technology (OT), engineering technology (ET), supply chain, asset management, services, and customer-facing systems will all be impacted.