Two big process automation providers, Invensys plc and Emerson Electric, issued financial reports this week that showed a continuing sag in orders and yet some signs of a possible turnaround in 2010.

For the first six months of its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2009, Invensys reported revenue of £1.06 billion, down 2% from the year-ago period.

Operating profit slid 15% to £102 million in the period. Despite the shifting sands of an unstable economy, Invensys’ three divisions — Rail, Operations Management, and Controls — appear to be starting to stabilize, according to Invensys CEO Ulf Henriksson.

Rail helped cushion the top-line decline, increasing sales 9% to £335 million. The Controls division, which manufactures heating, cooling, and refrigeration components, saw just a 1% decline in orders this period, signaling a stabilization of demand in North America and possibly some European countries, the company said.

Invensys Operations Management (IOM), which comprises the Invensys Process Systems, Wonderware, Eurotherm, and IMServ groups, saw significant declines in the North American market, mostly due to oil and gas companies’ lack of spending. Revenue for the division dipped 5% to £474 million in the period.

Key developments for IOM during the first half included a strategic five-year agreement with technology outsourcing company Cognizant; a multi-year agreement providing dynamic simulation technology to ConocoPhillips; and the appointment of Teemu Tunkelo, formerly of ABB, and Ravi Gopinath, formerly of Geometric, to lead IOM’s Europe/Russia/Africa and Asia Pacific teams, respectively. Meanwhile, the company continues to integrate the IOM groups under the watchful eye of new Invensys CFO Wayne Edmunds.

During the integration, the company wants to continue developing technologies that will help manufacturers optimize efficiencies within the plant. To that end, IOM this week announced new energy management and manufacturing intelligence applications.

The Wonderware Corporate Energy Management application connects directly to meters on a network and accepts manual data entry via the company’s Wonderware InTouch HMI and IntelaTrac mobile solutions. The application is layered on top of the Wonderware System Platform, enabling integration with a wide range of applications, networks, and I/O data sources, according to Invensys. Functionality includes recording consumption and demand levels at main and sub-meters for power, water, chill, gas, air, and steam. The application also associates production output to energy usage, providing the key performance indicators (KPIs) used in many sustainability programs. Pre-built reports give managers, supervisors, and workers new visibility and information on how energy is used within the operation, Invensys said in a statement.

Wonderware Intelligence Software 1.0 also debuted this week. It is said to enable customers to contextualize, aggregate, and report both historian and operational data using role-based dashboards, presenting KPIs and real-time operational business metrics that are used to monitor, tune, and optimize operations and supply chains. The application can gather information from both Wonderware’s family of products and external systems, such as ERP, LIMS, PDM, or other execution systems and historians, the company said.