Rockwell Automation, the quintessential controls supplier, has become a prime example of a 21st century company. Cognizant of a dramatically changing market requiring equally dramatic new ways of doing business, Rockwell several years ago set out to transform into a customer-centric, solutions-oriented, performance-driven business that could operate on a global scale.
Today, the 102-year-old company is no longer enmeshed in the identity soul-searching that always accompanies a fundamental transformation. After two years of solid financial performance, Rockwell is poised for the next major chapter in its quest to change everything from culture to core competencies and create a better future.
"We are no longer talking about who we are," said Keith Nosbusch, chairman and chief executive of Rockwell, in an interview at the company's 14th annual Automation Fair in St. Louis in mid-November. "Now, we are executing on what we are. The year 2005 was the first proof point that things are different."
And they are about to get a lot more different if Nosbusch has his way. In the next few years, Rockwell plans to accelerate several key initiatives -- in its vertical market strategy, in the process market, with its Logix control architecture, in an emerging intermediate level of factory operational information systems, and in expansion in overseas markets.
But it is in the area of information management where Rockwell may be making its most significant technological play. A number of years ago, Rockwell was one of the first companies to truly recognize the convergence underway between traditional automation and control technologies and those of higher level business systems such as ERP. Recent consolidation within the ERP player ranks has heightened a sense of urgency in Rockwell to establish a beachhead in the coming battle over enterprise-wide manufacturing data.
It is here where Rockwell is staking out its technological future, with its Logix architecture serving as a forward base to enable it to move up the stack of information management technologies in manufacturing to what it calls "plant-wide information systems." This broad idea comprises such functions as data and performance management, quality management, asset management, production, and visualization.
"No customer that I know of today has effectively and efficiently linked their plant floor systems and business systems," Nosbusch said. "This is the next battleground for us and our competitors. Our vision of the future is of a production, management, and performance suite to accomplish this."
But to successfully execute, Nosbusch knows that Rockwell has to change yet again, particularly in its partnering strategy. At the enterprise software level, Nosbusch sees a market that has coalesced around two major players -- SAP and Oracle . Rockwell competitors such as Siemens, Yokogawa, and Invensys have allied themselves with SAP and its NetWeaver platform. He acknowledges that Rockwell, which last year struck an alliance with IBM on its Websphere platform, is "early" in its efforts to forge similar relationships.
"We know we have to collaborate," he said. "We understand we have to partner with SAP. But where's the collaboration, where's the friction?"
The answers to those questions, for Rockwell and for the market at large, may very well determine who carries the day in the battle ahead.