VDC Research: Industrial Sensing, Networking & Control Market Blog

George Devol - A Pioneer in Industrial Automation

This morning VDC Research Group's Industrial Automation & Control practice would like to note the passing of George Devol at the age of 99. George Devol was the inventor of the first industrial robotic arm that was placed into service at General Motors in 1961 which was the same year his 1954 patent for "programmed article transfer" was approved. Since then, automotive and industrial production facilities have never been the same. In the intervening time, industrial robots have moved to the mainstream from niche products designed for one-off hazardous location or extremely repetitive applications involving heavy materials. As many of our reports show, the position sensors, and machine safety products that go into industrial automation products can individually represent markets with hundreds of millions of revenue dollars annually.

In our opinion, all industrial automation market participants should have a few moments of reflection for George Devol as it appears we all have something to thank him for.

Foxconn Initiative Shows a Growing Trend of Factory Automation in China

An article in today's Financial Times described the initiative of Foxconn in China to eventually replace and/or augment their workforce of 1 million workers with increased automation. Foxconn which is a leading contract manufacturer known for their work with Apple products including the iPad currently only uses approximately 10,000 robots. They plan to increase this number to 1 million by 2013. I had several thoughts on what this means.

The Financial Times article cited Alvin Kwock from JPMorgan where he noted ' that the cost of capital for purchasing and operating a robot has now met the cost of the workers it replaces.' In my opinion, the fact that this is happening in China is a particularly big deal. Why do I say this? In a highly automated factory, the main operating costs are for the facility, energy and raw materials. After that, you have the costs for a much smaller number of higher skilled workers. The tipping point comes at the point where China either has enough of these skilled workers to meet the increased demands or the labor costs for them increase to the point where there is not a significant Chinese advantage. At the same time, the governments in EMEA and the Americas are looking to increase job creation. Empty / underutilized factories, available workforces that have re-set expectations, and possible government incentives could drive a shift in the marketplace. The benefits that many N. American and European companies saw from outsourcing over the last 10 years are now drying up to the point that the problems from the logistics and quality are not being offset.

We saw some of this in the preliminary results from our recent level measurement survey. In the survey, we asked 'Do you see the regional percentages for your organizations demand for products changing in 2011 or 2012? Please indicate where you see your regional percentage for your company’s demand for Process Level and/or ITG Products and systems decreasing and increasing in 2011 or 2012.'

Quite simply, it looks like the trend moving the market demand from Americas and EMEA to APAC is slowing and even likely to be reversing.

My other thought is that's a lot of robots and it should make a pretty good impact on the industrial automation market regardless of where they are made.

Wireless Charging Could Empower Sensing in Industrial Applications

I saw an interesting article this morning about wireless charging that got me thinking about its possible use in industrial sensing. This technology is being developed by a MIT spin-off WiTricity and it's new partner MediaTek. The wireless charging they are working with is a big step beyond the inductive type charging plates that are currently on the market but, instead can charge devices at a distance. Obviously a cell phone that never needs charging and, perhaps, a much smaller battery geography would be a big deal on the consumer market but I'm thinking it could be a game changer in industrial settings.

Using wireless data transmission solves a lot of sensing problems particularly in equipment that has a lot of moving parts but that still leaves the problem of powering the device. Newer sensors with ultra low power demand and advanced long-life batteries solve some of this but, I suspect that they still leave some sense of concern that a dead sensor battery could idle an entire production line. Some of this concern could be alleviated by energy harvesting and/or solar technology but these are not ideal in all cases. But, if you could eliminate much of the battery size, combine energy harvesting and WiFi type power, you could have a really small wireless sensor that would be ultra-reliable. To me that's a pretty big deal.

Webcast: Position Sensor Market ‘Positioned’ for Recovery

Today we hosted a webcast where we presented our most recent findings from our position sensor market study.

While we would like to be flawless in our presentations, that doesn't always happen. 

One chart that was presented during the live broadcast had some incorrect information.  Unfortunately, we can't edit the recording, so we are taking this opportunity to correct our mistake.  Please note that we estimate that the top 3 Rotary (non-modular) position sensor manufacturers are:

• Johannes Heidenhain GMBH;
• Schneider Electric SA; and,
• SICK AG

The slides posted below do have the correct information.  We do apologize for this error and any confusion it may cause.  Should you have any detailed questions about the data from the webcast, or the study itself, please do not hesitate to contact someone on our team.

Position Sensor Market 'Positioned' For Recovery

View more presentations from VDC Research Group.