United States Factory Automation and Industrial Controls Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

The United States Factory Automation and Industrial Controls Market is expected to register a CAGR of 7.77% during the forecast period (2021 - 2026). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, robots are projected to play a major role in bringing jobs back to the United States, improving factory productivity, and helping manufacturers adapt to changing preferences of the consumer.

Key Highlights

• The United States is a significant market for vendors offering solutions for Smart Factories and is expected to grow at a significant rate over the forecast period, owing to the early adoption of factory automation. The United States is on the verge of the fourth industrial revolution, where data is being used on a large scale for production while integrating the data with a wide variety of manufacturing systems throughout the supply chain. This is fueling the adoption of advanced control systems in the country.
• The country is also one of the largest automotive markets in the world and is home to over 13 major auto manufacturers. Automotive manufacturing has been one of the largest revenue generators for the country in the manufacturing sector. As the automotive sector accounts for significant adoption for ICS and automation technologies, the country offers huge opportunity. Manufacturers are rapidly introducing robotics to the assembly line.
• The increased competitiveness among the vendors and manufacturers is expected to bring about an interesting growth prospect in the world of industrial automation. The government favoured industry-friendly policies will also help the factory automation market grow.
• The sluggish adoption of Industrial IoT technologies can be linked to the higher costs for maintaining their connections, considering that M2M connections were charged with heavy taxation, similar to mobile device subscriptions.

Key Market Trends

Distributed Control Systems (DCS) are Expected to Witness Significant Adoption

• DCS are process-oriented platforms that depend on a network of interconnected sensors, controllers, terminals, and actuators to act as a centralized master controller for all of a facility’s production operations. Thus, a DCS focuses on controlling and monitoring processes and offering facility operators the ability to see all facility operations in one place.
• DCS allows implementing more advanced process automation strategies because it operates on a closed-loop control platform. This makes DCS ideal for controlling operations at a single facility or factory. Additionally, a DCS is critical for maximizing the visibility of a facility’s day-to-day operational processes.
• One of the significant benefits of the DCS systems is that the digital communication between distributed controllers, workstations, and other computing elements follows the peer-to-peer access principle. To achieve greater precision and control in process industries, like the petrochemical, nuclear, and oil and gas industries, there is an increasing demand for controllers, which offer specified process tolerance around an identified set point.
• These requirements have driven the adoption of DCS, as these systems provide lower operational complexity and project risk, as well as functionalities, like flexibility for agile manufacturing in highly-demanding applications. The ability of DCS to integrate PLCs, turbomachinerycontrols, safety systems, third-party controls, and various other plant process controls for heat exchangers, feedwater heaters, water quality, among others, further drive the adoption of DCS in the energy sector.

Automotive Industry is Expected to Exhibit a Significant Adoption

• Smart factory offers the automotive industry opportunities to react faster to the market requirements, reduce manufacturing downtimes, enhance the efficiency of supply chains, and expand productivity.
• The automotive industry is one of the prominent sectors that hold a significant in the worldwide automated manufacturing facilities. It is observed that the production facilities of various automakers are automated to maintain accuracy and efficiency. Further, the growing trend of replacing conventional vehicles with EVs is expected to further augment the automotive industry's demand.
• One of the primary concerns of the automotive industry is the duration of a project. Quick return-on-investment projects, along with low-cost automation and cost innovation help the manufacturers to improve competitiveness through efficiency improvement.
• Moreover, the growing adoption of automation in manufacturing processes and digitization and AI involvement are primary factors driving industrial robots' demand in the automotive sector. It has been identified that the auto assembly increased significantly, using automation, showing a growth pattern in the number of cars being produced worldwide, while simultaneously cutting costs, paving the way for the growth smart factory's implementation in this sector.

Competitive Landscape

The United States Factory Automation and Industrial Controls Market is competitive due to several players in the market. Players are involved in product development and strategic activities such as partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions. Some of the key developments in the market are:

• September 2021- Rockwell Automation, Inc., the digital transformation and industrial automation company completed the Plex Systems acquisition. This acquisition allows Rockwell to strengthen their cloud-delivered intelligent manufacturing solutions and provide smart manufacturing in customer operations.
• April 2021 - Google Cloud and Siemens collaborated to streamline production operations and boost shop floor efficiency. Siemens plans to integrate Google Cloud's top data cloud and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) capabilities with its factory automation solutions to assist manufacturers in the manufacturing process.
• February 2021 - Rockwell Automation and Fanuc America announced the formation of a coalition for an apprenticeship program aimed to educate and help in the development of skills of workers for robotics and automation.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support