Market Trends of Europe Process Automation Industry
This section covers the major market trends shaping the Europe Process Automation Market according to our research experts:
Pharmaceutical Industry is Expected to Hold Significant Market Share
- Automation is embedded in primary aspects such as Active Pharma Ingredients (API) and other secondary aspects, including packaging and distribution. ​Digital transformation provides new operational efficiency, quality, process automation, and employee productivity to pharmaceutical companies in the region.
- Furthermore, Lonza selected Rockwell Automation to implement the Lonza strategic vision of bringing the digital factory to nine former Capsugel facilities that manufacture drug capsules. The company has selected Rockwell Automation’s PharmaSuite MES software to digitize the operations in its manufacturing operations. This solution would help avoid disruptions during high volume periods of just-in-time orders for on-demand production.​
- Additionally, Lonza would use PharmaSuite MES software and FactoryTalk InnovationSuite software to better trace products down to the individual capsule carton and gain insights into performance and production. Segregation of SAP and PharmaSuite MES helped avoid the disruption of a global enterprise resource planning ERP shutdown or required maintenance by enforcing workflows and collecting necessary information.​
- Moreover, the post-COVID-19 workforce and organization would also likely adopt new, more efficient ways of working. New capabilities would also be needed within operations functions as the workforce shifts from manual skills to more technical skills. ​As the adoption of automation increases, pharmaceutical-operations organizations might have a greater need for talent that can program, operate, and interpret data from these new technologies. This would require significant up-skilling and capability-building efforts alongside ongoing strategic planning.​
- Over the past three months, many pharma companies in Europe have mobilized their employees to remote working conditions. In such a scenario, automation helps them continue the essential processes unobstructed. Automation in drug discovery enhances the reliability of the entire process by minimizing manual errors, augments the throughput, and improves the ability to reproduce. ​
United Kingdom Accounts for the Largest Market Share
- The food and beverage industry maintains some of the highest hygiene standards in the country while delivering high-volume production systems. In addition, competitive forces demand that a business is efficient, both in terms of the raw materials consumed and the cost of manufacturing. Delivering these objectives is a crucial part of remaining in the industry. Seasonality of demand and labor forces have also prompted the industry to adopt increased automation, thus assisting the market's growth.
- Automation in the food industry increases competitiveness by eliminating errors and waste, enhancing efficiency and productivity, and expanding profit margins. Cost savings can be diverted to R&D and other business improvements.
- Moreover, with investment roll-outs by the government to revive the pandemic hit United Kingdom economy, infrastructure, and the electronics industry are marked as the primary beneficiaries alongside the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises. The infrastructure and electronics industry are heavy users of the industrial control systems' hardware products and software solutions and are expected to have a direct positive effect.
- Additionally, technologies and terminologies such as process discovery, process optimization, process intelligence, and process orchestration are becoming a more significant part of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). There is an ongoing trend of increasing a closer relationship between business process management (BPM) and RPA in the future.
- Further, different industrial automation systems, such as SCADA, PLCs, and MES on a single physical server, can be easily accessed at a different location on the plant floor using virtual machines. It has been adopted in the country to reduce the overall cost for servers and increase the flexibility in adopting industrial automation systems and software in the process and discrete industries.