The industrial control and automation, transport and medical sectors are, arguably, seeing a paradigm shift tantamount to the first industrial revolution – electronic automation and its associated control functions now dominates.
Where once, perhaps, a red button was connected directly to an electrical contact and used in emergencies, the same red button now represents the interface to a more complex network of processors, sensors and actuators.
The industrial market is highly horizontal and further partitioned by applications, each with its own demands. Common to these segments is the need for cost effective solutions, which is driving time to market down while allowing the equipment builders, integrators and operators to focus on innovation. Process automation is seeing more distributed control and this growing complexity is bringing new flexibility challenges.
Historically these sectors were driven by functionality, but areas such as safety, security, quality, maintainability and cost efficiency are now of paramount importance.
Suppliers to the industrial market, as in any other, are being pressured to deliver more for less. While technology consolidation and convergence are the normal routes to cost reduction, this can raise certification issues for products that need to demonstrate compliance with the IEC 61508 safety standard.
The challenge facing the industrial market, therefore, is how to continue to deliver cost reduction and feature enhancement through convergence and consolidation while remaining compliant with growing safety requirements. Compounding the issue, the market has a huge installed base of legacy applications, which require maintenance and feel the pressure to innovate.
