Market Overview

The factory automation and industrial control systems market is expected to register a CAGR of over 8.4 % during the forecast period, 2019 - 2024. The evolution of technological advancements and innovations across various manufacturing units have encouraged the adoption of automation technologies. Digitization and Industry 4.0 revolution have significantly stimulated the growth of automation among industries, by necessitating the use of smarter and automated solutions, such as robotics and control systems, to improve production processes.

• Automation has drastically changed the way of production in the industrial sector, by reducing the manufacturing time and production cost. The production lines in several factories were manual for a considerable time. Even if there have been improvements in assembly technologies, such as faster pick-and-place machines and smarter reflow ovens, the back-end operations have remained non-automated.
• Hence, there has been an exponential rise in labor costs. In addition, the quality requirements are also getting more stringent. Against this backdrop, factory automation can cause a reduction in production, operation, and labor costs.
• Various advancements have been made in the automation of the various activities that were formerly carried out manually (particularly in the labor-intensive manufacturing industry), with most of these being almost fully automated, with the help of the latest technologies. This has led to improved efficiency, high-quality products, and attendant savings in labor and costs.

• The high costs of automated systems are associated with effective and robust hardware and efficient software. Automation equipment requires higher capital expenditure, to invest in automation technologies (an automated system can cost millions of dollars to design, fabricate, and install). They also require a higher level of maintenance than a manually operated machine, and generally a lower degree of flexibility in terms of the possible products, as compared to a manual system (even the most flexible automation is less flexible than humans, the most versatile machines of all).
• The sluggish adoption of Industrial IoT technologies can be linked to the higher costs for maintaining their connections, considering that M2M connections were charged with heavy taxation similar to mobile device subscriptions. The acquisition and installation cost of a control system for industrial automation represents half of the total cost during its lifetime. Additionally, the frequent changes in technology and networking result in significant cost, which is more than that of the initial investment, further slowing down the adoption.
• In addition, significantly low adoption of SMEs in developing countries, like Brazil, who cannot bear the product costs, is restraining the market’s growth.

Scope of the Report

The industrial control and factory automation is a rising trend in the manufacturing industry, which provides smart manufacturing infrastructure. Industrial control and factory automation facilitate cost efficiency and quality of production, and standardize manufacturing, reliability, and flexibility in the process of manufacturing. Industrial control and factory automation offers a perfect mix of mechanical components and devices for the information technology market.

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Key Market Trends

Utilities is Expected to Register a Significant Growth

Process automation paves the path for digital data and analytics that can reduce power system costs by the following means

• By reducing operations and maintenance costs
• By improving power plant and network efficiency
• By reducing unplanned outages and downtime and
• By extending the operational lifetime of assets.

The overall savings from these digitally-enabled measures are estimated to be in the order of USD 80 billion per year over 2016-40, or about 5% of total annual power generation costs based on the enhanced global deployment of available digital technologies to all power plants and network infrastructure.

Globally, data centers consumed around 194 TWh of electricity in 2014, or about 1% of the total demand. Although data center workload is estimated to triple by 2020, related energy demand is expected to grow by only 3% due to continued efficiency gains. This is expected to drive the growth in power generation for meeting the demand from the ICT sector.

The evolution of smart grid and synchronization to match the variable demand for electricity between the peak demand period to rest of demand is expected to further create high demand from the energy and utilities sector. Due to the automation of processes and a networked system communication, digitalization can help integrate the renewable energy by enabling grids to match energy demand to times when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. In the European Union alone, increased storage and digitally-enabled demand response are estimated to reduce curtailment of solar PVs and wind power from 7% in 2017 to 1.6% in 2040, avoiding 30 million metric ton of CO2 emission in 2040.

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