Conventional legacy systems, despite being manufactured without alarm management and other latest technologies seen in distributed control system (DCS), function satisfactorily even beyond their lifetime and decrease the scope for upgrading. Therefore, to capture global markets, DCS manufacturers need to adopt different strategies to upgrade the conventional legacy systems. DCS vendors must also overcome the obstacles arising from the use of old, mechanical components in the legacy systems. Further, they can assist in the categorical migration of end users from legacy systems, providing scope for automation vendors to offer customized solutions.

This Frost & Sullivan research service provides an overview of and an outlook for the world DCS markets. The study segments the markets into chemical, pulp and paper, minerals, metals and mining, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, power, food and beverages, water and wastewater, textiles, and cement DCSs. It also provides detailed revenue forecasts for each of the end- user segments along with geographic and market share analyses. This invaluable market information is essential for both large and small market participants seeking to position themselves to gain maximum return on investments.

Increased Use of DCS Helps Companies Overcome Safety and Other Related Risks

Increasing customer knowledge about industrial products along with severe competition has forced companies to automate their controlling and monitoring processes. Implementation of DCSs have helped companies gain in terms of cost reduction, fault tolerance, reliability, capacity utilization, flexibility, reducing safety-related risks, and meeting regulatory requirements.

"These third generation process control systems also bring down process downtime and offer superior quality with a higher return on investment," elaborates the analyst of this research. "DCS are very useful in handling mission-critical applications involving large number of inputs and outputs."

Penetration into New Areas to Drive DCS Markets

Customers looking to achieve operational excellence provide DCS companies with an avenue to enter untapped as well as mature markets. In this scenario, DCS solution providers are trying to offer better process knowledge management capabilities, thus supporting revenue growth. The DCS markets are expected to grow from $9.57 billion in 2004 to $12.43 billion by 2011. In particular, the enterprises in developed economies such as the United States, certain western European nations, and Japan generate additional revenue from their retrofit and service-oriented markets.

"DCS vendors can also enter the food and beverage as well as the water and waste water segments and convince end users of the reduced life cycle costs of their control solutions," suggests the analyst. Vendors should emphasize on the DCS’s ability to control process automation at all levels, namely production inputs, output logistics, and field level production management. The DCS must also efficiently integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, management executive systems (MES), and field level programmable logic control (PLC) systems and provide a single unified architecture.