The Roots of Automation Innovation by Jim Pinto

Since automation is such a fragmented business, most innovation comes from start-ups. The major companies all have a conglomeration of products, each with relatively small volume, but lumped together to form sizeable businesses. Indeed, many mini-conglomerates thrive through astute and shrewd accumulation of innovative niche players.

An exception to the startup-innovation rule was distributed control systems (DCS), a mix of several important innovations developed in the early 1970's by a team of engineers within Honeywell. This generated a new category which achieved $100m annual revenue within just a couple of years, and the segment has since expanded to several billions of dollars worldwide.

The other major automation segment to achieve significance, also in the 1970’s, was the programmable logic controller (PLC). This breakthrough innovation was the brainchild of the prolific inventor Dick Morley, who was with Bedford Associates, a small development company that worked for Modicon (now part of Schneider).

Fisher Controls was started by Bill Fisher, making innovative valves and actuators. Rosemount grew through innovations in differential pressure sensors. Interestingly, both Rosemount and Fisher tried to grow by branching out into DCS, but their offerings were relatively insignificant till Emerson put them together with PCs and Software (Intellution and other ingredients) to generate leadership with Delta V.

Take a look at my article on Automation Innovation in the March 2007 issue of Automation World (link below).