Emerging economies, such as those in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries and Eastern Europe, are helping to propel this growth. Senior Analyst Himanshu Shah, the principal author of ARC's "Automation Systems for Discrete Industries Worldwide Outlook', notes: "One reason the automation business did so well during the past few years and will continue to do well after settling of recent economic turmoil is the huge list of challenges and changing conditions in the global business environment that manufacturers must respond to."

Globalisation drives the use of advanced automation worldwide. Consequently, automation equipment is widely employed across all discrete industries. Energy scarcity in comparison to supply also affects automation in a wide range of industries. With increasing consumer demand from the growing middle class and the need to produce and save energy to cope with the rapidly rising global energy demands and costs will drive growth once current economic turmoil settles.

While manufacturers are more cautious when it comes to capital investments, they recognise that automation and energy savings are crucial to survive in the global economy. Consequently, they ensure that their capital is well spent and are continuously examining their engineering, operations and maintenance practices to fully leverage the benefits of automation technology.

There is market demand for the Programmable Automation Controller (PAC), a multi-disciplined controller capable of providing real-time logic, motion and process control, in addition to HMI and other functions, on a single platform. PAC offers one programming and engineering tool as well as one programming language and a single tag database for the complete system. The report identifies numerous industry trends impacting automation equipment, including industrial Ethernet, benefits of wireless automation, and machine safeguarding.

Increasing use of automation by manufacturers is vital due to the environment created by globalisation, which fuels market growth. The report discusses other crucial factors such as increasing demand for automobiles in Asia, growing demand for more data in industrial plants, availability of more capable automation for increased agility and flexibility, airport and road construction in emerging economies, further opportunities in high-growth countries, automation equipment satisfying the ease of deployment, opportunity for more service revenues, increased defence investment, demand for automation to satisfy regulatory requirements and expanding automation applications.