Market Trends of Europe ICS Industry
This section covers the major market trends shaping the Europe Industrial Control Systems Market according to our research experts:
Automotive Sector to Drive Market Growth
The automotive sector is among the prominent sectors that hold a significant share of automated manufacturing facilities across the world. The production facilities of various automakers are automated to maintain efficiency. The growing trend of replacing conventional vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs) is expected to augment demand from the automotive sector further. For instance, the projected electric vehicle sales in Europe are expected to reach 6.33 million units by 2025, followed by China with 4.84 million units, according to UBS.
Using artificial intelligence, the automotive sector's assembly lines have become more productive, efficient, and cost-effective. Industrial robotics on the shop floor, especially cylindrical robots, have transformed automobile production by automating the manufacturing process. For instance, in 2020, Techman announced that its collaborative robots had entered the supply chain of European and American car manufacturers.
The E2EW series is optimized to withstand the harsh conditions of traditional automotive welding processes due to the fluororesin coating providing increased spatter resistance. The new sensors also support IO-Link capabilities, enabling real-time data gathering on proximity sensors' detection levels and temperature changes from a single location. Such sensors are also widely used in industrial sensors to detect long-range distances, collision avoidance, determining the size of objects, navigation, and others.
The International Automotive Components (IAC) implemented Manufacturing 4.0 and smart factory applications at the UK site in Halewood, England. This application deployed smart logistics, cross-company integration, and collaborative robots (cobots). Moreover, German auto parts manufacturer Bosch has invested around EUR 31 million at its Indian plant to develop Industry 4.0 solutions.
Rising Incidence of Cyberattacks is Among the Factors Driving the Market
According to the X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2020 from IBM, the threat targets on ICS and Operational Technologies (OT) assets have increased over 2,000% since 2018. The incidence of targeting OT assets in 2019 was more significant than the volume of activity observed in the previous three years combined. The majority of these targets used a combination of known vulnerabilities within ICS hardware components and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) in addition to brute-force login tactics such as password-spraying attacks.
A survey conducted by ARC Advisory Group on the state of cybersecurity of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) recently indicated that around 70% of companies predict an attack on their OT/ICS infrastructure to be very likely. Similar results were found in research conducted by Siemens and Ponemon Institute. The survey results indicate that OT was at a higher risk of cyberattack than IT. About 54% of respondents expect that they will be stuck with at least one cyberattack on critical infrastructure within the next few years.
With cyberattacks increasing in smart factories in the US, there is growing concern about using Industrial Control Systems and the government has plans to curb the rise of such crimes. This is aligned with the growing usage of industrial control systems that are manufactured in the country for smart factories to avoid the risk of cybersecurity breaches. Companies like Panasonic North America offer complete smart manufacturing solutions, including ERP and others.
Hence, over the past few years, oil and gas companies have invested heavily into cybersecurity technologies, such as incident response solutions and software capable of collecting logs in ICS environments to enhance visibility and segmenting networks, prevent lateral movement, and eliminate imminent threats.
