Scott summerville interview

FROM THE BOARDROOM

Quantum Leap Scott Summerville, President of Rockwell Automation Asia Pacific, shares with Goh Tz’en Long some of the strategies that will propel the global automation leader forward.

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he emerging economies of the Asia Pacific present exciting possibilities for the automation industry...

What are the growth strategies for the Asia Pacific?

We pride ourselves on servicing, supporting and selling our products and solutions to all markets in the region. We have a very consistent approach to sales and services that enables us to deliver value to our customers wherever they’re located. We’ve been growing our business at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15 percent over the past four years. Growth has slowed slightly due to a variety of factors, but we’re continuing to post gains in Asia.

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In terms of verticals, where are the areas of focus?

We see Asia transforming from infrastructure and resource-related vertical sectors to consumer-facing verticals. These

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include automotive, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, and household and personal care.

As the region undergoes this transformation, particularly in China, India and the emerging markets, I think we’re well positioned to serve our customers and add significant value – given our extensive experience in these vertical markets.

Our strategy is to increase our market footprint, especially in OEM and process. We just recently reached an agreement by which we will acquire Industrial Control Services Group, a leading global supplier of critical control and safety solutions to process industries. It will enable us to incorporate their high availability, fault-tolerant technology into the Logix architecture, extending the reach of this technology into discrete and hybrid process applications.

Additionally, we can leverage our Logix platform in process and continue to make inroads in the process batch area, as well as light DCS applications such as steel and oil & gas.

In OEM, we have CompactLogix, a competitive product that follows our Integrated Architecture strategy.

It will allow us to extend ourselves downward from the midrange market into one that’s dominated by OEMs. What trends do you see from the ground in China?

Growth in China has moderated, and it has become an increasingly competitive market. Now, it is critical that we move into new market spaces, expand our market footprint, become as efficient as we can with our commercial resources, and improve the overall efficiency of our business model – so that we can continue to increase market share.

From a growth standpoint, India exceeds China right now. It looks very promising, for the next several years, as the community becomes more pro business and industries continue to modernise and adopt state-of-theart, leading edge technology, moving forward.

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FROM THE BOARDROOM How can manufacturers react to ever shrinking product life cycles?

We recently invested heavily in our Singapore business centre to improve the cycle time of customer requirements, product design and development, and rollout.

We had a lot of support from EDB in Singapore to make that happen – because locating manufacturing and business operations close to the customer is extremely important because it allows us to increase the speed and quality of our decisionmaking and delivery.

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How does Rockwell keep its software products cutting edge?

About 18 months ago we acquired a company called Datasweep. It’s turned out to be a significant development as it provides us with a very stable, open MES platform that we now use as our standard production centre software.

We’re also developing a suite of applications around that platform, to provide our customers with a full MES suite in FactoryTalk.

We’ll continue to look at potential acquisitions that complement our software portfolio, and can deliver MES solutions in the Asia Pacific region.

With the right strategy, organic growth is more efficient and sustainable over the long term.

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Do you think wireless technology will cause a revolution on the plant floor and in process plants?

Most likely it will be more of an evolution than a revolution. Customers are always interested in reducing costs and improving their efficiency in doing business. Wireless technology has shown promise in accomplishing both.

To some extent, it’s proceeded a little slower than people had hoped.

There are concerns about safety and data interruptions in a wireless environment. I think it shows promise, but these major issues need to be addressed.

We are very involved with standardisation efforts, particularly the SP100 wireless efforts in automation. Most of the activity has been in the process space, specifically

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in process instrumentation. We work closely with our instrumentation partner, Endress+Hauser, in the areas of process instrumentation. At some point, the interface with our Logix architecture and the capability of our partners like Cisco to help us provide wireless technology solutions will be the key.

Do you see more growth organically or through M&A? With the right strategy, organic growth is more efficient and sustainable over the long term. However, sometimes you can’t develop the domain expertise, so acquisitions can be a viable alternative. It’s both an art and science to acquire companies and integrate them successfully.

We found that to be the case with software, both in terms of products and solution delivery capabilities.

Thus our long-term strategy focuses on organic growth supported by strategic bolt-on acquisitions when needed.

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What are Rockwell’s strategies towards attracting and keeping talent?

We have over 2,000 employees in the region; two years ago we probably had 1,200. So we’ve increased our

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headcount significantly in both our commercial, customer-facing organisation as well as manufacturing, such as the Singapore business centre. We also have a larger manufacturing footprint in China where we are manufacturing products with a subsequent increase in employees.

We have a number of different strategies that differentiate us from the competition. First, in our core areas, we certainly are a technology leader. If you look at Integrated Architecture, I believe that it’s way out in front of the competition.

As a result, we can offer employees the opportunity to work for a global technology leader - a very attractive element to our value proposition. We also have very talented people, and certainly talent attracts other talented people.

ENQUIRY NO. 4800

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