India, where industrial automation started in the 1990s, has till date only scratched the surface. A lot still needs to happen. While some industries like the automotive and automotive component industry have done well, we still have low productivity in our factories
Uma Gupta
Wednesday, October 09, 2013: In the last couple of years, the automation industry in India grew at an average of 12 per cent per annum. Today, it is approximately Rs 120 billion in size and has the potential to grow by 15-20 per cent given the existing capacity addition in manufacturing, infrastructure and energy sectors. “Manufacturing sector concerns persist because other than some major ongoing oil and gas projects, there was no major investment. Hopefully, by the end of this year, investments in oil and gas, fertiliser, petrochemical and cement sectors would pick up and boost a big segment of the automation industry,” inform Anup Wadhwa, director, Automation Industry Association (AIA), and K Nandakumar, president, AIA.
Market components and trends
Somshubhro Pal Choudhury, managing director, Analog Devices India (ADI), says, “Industrial automation and control market is hard to define as it encompasses several classes of equipment across several industry verticals. Many of the companies do turnkey projects, which implies that software and services get included in their revenue as well.”
“As such automation products and solutions are oriented along three categories: Continuous process control applications (as in chemical, food and beverage, oil and gas, life sciences, traditional power generation, pulp and paper, waste water, etc), job work and batch production applications (as in automotive, fabricated metals, plastics, packaging, etc) and electrical energy management application (transmission, distribution, etc),” explain Wadhwa and Nandakumar.
There are many parts to an industrial automation and control system, which operate in multiple layers from sensors to control systems, to SCADA to ERP.
The figure below shows the various components of an industrial automation and control automation system. The field-level devices are a series of sensors and actuators controlled by intelligent logic controllers. The control network is industrial-quality Ethernet, RS-485, CAN, ModBus or other protocols. It also includes DCS/SCADA, HMI and PLC/PAC systems. The office network is dominated by the regular Ethernet network and the automation servers and PC network.
“We are seeing manufacturing equipment customers being challenged by the growing complexity of software used to control their machines,” says Tony Lennon, MathWorks industry manager for industrial automation.
“The need for better performance and efficiency and safer operation is driving this trend. Meeting these demands often means incorporating more software to control complex dynamics and provide better supervisory and fault detection logic. MathWorks helps these industrial equipment companies develop better control systems by providing modeling and simulation tools, such as MATLAB and Simulink, which reduce software development time by 50 per cent on average,” he adds.
Talking about innovations in this space, Choudhury says, “The industrial automation and control industry is characterised by smaller volumes and a huge variety of applications servicing diverse needs. Automation companies customise products for specific applications and end user requirements. Hence innovation comes more from targeted applications and less so from the application of the hottest and the newest technologies.”
“The one exception to that is on the sensor and the human-machine interface (HMI) side, where significant innovations and developments have resulted. Wide-ranging sensors for measurements as well as touch screen interfaces are bringing growth to the technology providers,” he says, adding, “Another unique characteristic of such automation is the decades of reliability and shelf life that the equipment and the resultant semiconductor parts have to endure. Automating a process or the factories is very expensive, and, once done, it stays for several years. Hence a highly configurable and flexible system is always desired besides the reliability.”
Choudhury further states, “Another trend is energy consumption, which, in turn, reflects total operations cost. This is driving the need for more efficient motor design and deployment. For over 40 years, designers of industrial process control systems and Analog Devices Inc. have worked together to define, develop and deploy complete signal chain solutions, optimised for a wide array of applications.”
Digi International provides equipment that are useful in several levels of an industrial automation and control system.
“The key market trend is to identify effective ways to increase integration across all enterprise systems, and within the industrial facility to make things more flexible so as to increase the quality of information being used to guide production,” according to Ben Tucker, sales application engineer, Digi M2M Solutions India.
Market drivers
“Solutions capability is the key driver. Companies established in India are doing a lot of value addition in terms of application engineering and application software, including embedded software, other automation support services like consulting, project engineering, simulation, commissioning, AMC, education and training. This has created comfort and confidence in the eco-system about sustaining the drive for modernisation and adapting to the latest technologies,” says Wadhwa.
Business in India is tightly linked to the global market—which values the ability to get information about manufacturing, delivery, forecast and quality transparently across the enterprise as well as between partners. Success in India comes from offering solutions that are focused on solving real problems. The companies that are able to do this are doing well.
“Industrial automation market worldwide is being driven by several trends. In emerging nations like India, industrial and factory automation is rapidly advancing. More and more manufacturing is getting automated, and these emerging countries are skipping generations to go with the latest available technologies. Integration to enterprise systems, sustainability and eco-friendliness, and availability of smarter technologies like sensors, HMI and communication technologies are driving automation markets worldwide,” says Choudhury.
“Local Indian players struggle in terms of economies of scale, which is a distinct advantage enjoyed by the global players who have huge R&D expenditure along with a strong sales and marketing presence in the Indian market. Frugal innovation to reduce the total cost of ownership significantly would definitely drive growth. Local players could also look for potential partnerships with the growing number of Indian design houses that are doing a lot of product development and designs for their global clients,” he says.
“With the government’s thrust towards boosting the electronics manufacturing industry and the solar industry, manufacturing will pick up in both the sectors, leading to a rise in automated plants. As highlighted earlier, energy costs are driving efficiency on the motor controls side,” Choudhury added.
Challenges to market growth
Increased productivity is one outcome of a series of benefits that automation brings to the shop floor. Most adopters recognise that there are internal barriers to cross and that’s not easy. Hence automation must always be seen in the context of the bigger picture.
“Automation is not just the replacement of man by machine to do routine tasks. It is the standardisation of processes and methods that can be fed into machines unlike humans. Of course, not to forget machines that can be put to work in high-risk/hazardous areas that we will not risk with human resources,” explain Wadhwa and Nandakumar.
“However, the biggest benefit is the possibility of training the very staff who were doing repetitive tasks in better, meaningful jobs, which gives them too a chance to rise up the social ladder. In other words, it is a holistic processing tool towards sustainability. When our industry awakens to such a vision, people will embrace automation for all such benefits, not merely by a return-on-investment (ROI) approach,” they added.
India, where industrial automation started in the 90s, has till date only scratched the surface. A lot still needs to happen.
Says Choudhury, “While some industries like the automotive and automotive component industry have done well, we still have low productivity in our factories. Cost of automation is one big reason why small to mid-size Indian manufacturers have been slow to take up automation while trying to justify the ROI.”
“The Indian government should consider incentives for industrial automation to increase productivity and bring the Indian manufacturing sector to global standards. With the growing consumption in India, sourcing for a wide range of products, systems and sub-systems will happen locally and the Indian manufacturers should be in a position to augment their systems, lower the production cost, achieve better quality and prepare for the increased supply demand of a growing economy. Frugal innovation in terms of lower-cost automation systems will obviously be in huge demand,” he feels.
“Technical challenges for market growth are related to infrastructural factors like energy, transportation, logistics and water. Companies need to make sure they have the means to sustain production, and to do this they have to look at the factors further outside the core manufacturing process. However, the biggest challenge for companies is to find partners who have experience in doing complex integration,” informs Tucker.
Key vendors
The industrial automation market is highly segmented between different equipment manufacturers, control system manufacturers, sensor manufacturers, and software and analytics providers. No one company has a complete solution, nor would such a solution be focused enough to be successful in the India marketplace.
“The market is controlled by global multinational companies like Siemens, ABB and Honeywell, which have over 80 per cent market share in India. There are several smaller Indian players spread across the West, North and South regions that have the remaining 20 per cent of the market,” informs Choudhury.
Market opportunities and threats. The biggest threats across this whole sector are the inability to move quickly, and not having means to share information with other partners and to integrate systems to communicate with each other. This is also the area of largest opportunity, since being able to connect from shop floor to sales to service, is where the greatest value exists, according to Tucker.
Strengths and weaknesses. As mentioned above, strength exists in being able to collaborate easily to build customised solutions that drive value for each customer, for the customer’s customers, and to provide a more efficient and productive relationship—addressing the key needs of different participants in different roles.
“The vendors who understand this are working to make their existing systems interoperable with other vendors’ systems. The ones who are trying to ‘build it all in house’ and offer a comprehensive single-vendor solution will not be able to innovate and deliver the kinds of products and solutions that customers are asking for, both in India for the domestic market, and in the broadly connected world where India is a key supplier of knowledge work and innovation globally,” feels Tucker. l
The author is an executive editor at EFY
Trends in automation products
Sensors and transmitters. Digital technologies with smart diagnostics and wireless connectivity
Control valves and actuators. Higher-precision electro-pneumatics and electrohydraulics
AC/DC drive. Digital architecture
Motion control systems. Compactness, open standards, multiple-axis capability
Recorders. Software based with real-time analytics
Programmable logic controllers. Smaller form factor, open connectivity and in-built safety
DCS/SCADA. KPI dashboards and Web reporting features
MMI/HMI. Colour touch screens
— Anup Wadhwa, director, Automation Industry Association (AIA)
Electronics Bazaar, South Asia’s No.1 Electronics B2B magazine
