Rockwell Automation:
We have not faced any problems in India

Keith D Nosbusch, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rockwell Automation.

 

Rockwell has developed a whole new system that enables us to leverage our proprietary- embedded knowledge in an open environment in a way that no competitor of ours has been able to do. The modern world of manufacturing is all about productivity and the tool employed for it is automation. Rockwell, which has been at the forefront of automation systems, had started out as a giant defence and industrial conglomerate, Rockwell International. Through a series of acquisitions and spin-offs, it shed its image as an aerospace and defence company to position itself as one of the biggest players in industrial automation. Keith D Nosbusch, the president and chief executive officer of the $4-billion Rockwell Automation was in India recently. He spoke on the world of manufacturing systems and the various milestones that automation has passed through in the last few decades. Excerpts:

There’s this debate revolving around automation and its impact on employment, especially so in countries like India. How have you coped with it?
We have not faced any problem in India or any other high-population country, including China. Companies have realised they are in a global economy where cutthroat competition means that you need to focus on the quality of your products and your productivity levels relentlessly. In fact, I believe that countries like India and China, where the population levels are huge, are at an advantage. This is with respect to adoption of new automation and system upgrades as these countries do not have the baggage of a legacy system. By legacy system I mean old and established means and modes of manufacturing in western economies, which in many cases involved total overhaul when pitted against new technologies and demands of the consumer and markets. Automation companies faced many more problems in making them realise the potential of productivity enhancement through embodiment of new system platforms. Our automation systems are very much scaleable and so are suitable for all kinds of manufacturing setups, even the small and medium sized enterprises, which are to be found in higher numbers in the developing economies of the world.

The move of the control systems from proprietary world to an open world in the 1990s was a big change affecting automation. It is similar to the debate over open source code for operating systems of computers and the direction of DVD technology. What impact did the shift have on the automation world?
Growth for automation has been very good since the early 1990s in the network area. I understand that the technology world is having a debate over a product like DVD but I am not an expert on it so I would restrict my observation to the automation world. At that time, the control world was almost all proprietary, and customers wanted an open system. An open architecture made the control equipment on the factory floor compatible and interoperable with competitor offerings. So, the industry developed its own standards,which defined programming requirements for different modes of control. The big control vendors such as Rockwell put their proprietary networking architecture in the open market and we formed user groups. The move from proprietary systems to an open system era has brought different things to different stakeholders. The biggest beneficiary has been our consumers or the companies using automation as they are not stuck with a system for which upgradation is limited to the initial proprietary module or providers of such modules. At the same time, for automation companies it has translated into a reorganisation. So, for example, companies like Rockwell, which developed new systems and technologies have emerged from the shake-up as stronger entities. But there are a set of companies who have not managed to make the transition. We have been a strong proponent of open systems. It has also meant much more competition in the automation space and consumers have more choice. So, the market has become tougher and it’s OK with us. We at Rockwell, have essentially developed a whole new system that enables us to leverage our proprietary- embedded knowledge in an open environment in a way that no other competitor of ours has been able to do and that has been our strength.

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