At the close of what has been a double-digit growth fiscal year for most of the big automation vendors, Rockwell Automation and Siemens AG this week reported solid financial numbers driven by strong market demand.

Rockwell yesterday announced that 2007 sales were up 10%, to $5 billion, amid a corporate revamp designed to build the company's standing within the process industries. Net income for the year ended Sept. 30, 2007 rose sharply — to $1.49 billion from $607 million in 2006 — mainly as a result of the sale of its Power Systems group earlier in the year. By comparison, income from continuing operations, excluding special charges, grew 15% to $597 million, from $517.3 million in 2006.

Fourth-quarter sales jumped 15% year over year to $1.37 billion, but net income in Q4 was flat at about $165 million, the company said. Meanwhile, in the Control Products & Solutions group, sales spiked 20% to $801 million, from $667 million in the same period last year. Company officials credited acquisitions with some of the gains.

During the year, Rockwell divested its Power Systems business and made three strategic acquisitions, with Pavilion Technologies Inc., a purveyor of advanced process control software, the most recent. Providing products and solutions to the process industries will be an important growth lever in 2008, company officials said on a conference call to announce the results. Logix, the company's multi-discipline control platform, remains the company's bread-and-butter product line, but officials hope new additions to the product portfolio in the form of complex process modeling and safety software will enable Rockwell to compete for business in the oil and gas, life sciences, and chemical industries.

In order to break into that space, however, Rockwell must offer value-added services that allow customers to meet business needs, including achieving faster time to market, lowering total cost of ownership, improving asset utilization, and reducing manufacturing risks, said Rockwell Chairman and CEO Keith Nosbusch, in an interview with Managing Automation.

"For us to evolve from a discrete company to a plant-wide control supplier ... we have to become more of a solution provider," Nosbusch said.

The company is not changing its core, Nosbusch noted, but augmenting it with new capabilities. These changes will be major contributors toward Rockwell's projected 10% to 12% revenue growth in 2008, he said. Logix, which the company projects will grow by 20% in 2008, will also help the transition into process markets. Currently, two-thirds of Logix sales go into the process and OEM space, Nosbusch said.

Collectively, Rockwell's efforts in 2007 will keep the company on a steady course going forward, officials said. "Our demonstrated ability to diversify our revenue base, combined with recent acquisitions, causes us to be optimistic that 2008 will be another good year for Rockwell," Nosbusch told financial analyst during yesterday's briefing.

In its fiscal fourth quarter, ended Sept. 30, Germany-based automation giant Siemens AG reported revenue up 9% year over year to €20.2 billion, while orders rose 21%, to €21.3 billion.

The highlight of the quarter was an operational profit of nearly €2 billion, a 166% jump over the same period last year. All of the company's nine operational groups contributed to the profit results, having reached their target margin ranges for the first time, and in accordance with Siemens' Fit 4 2010 initiative, the company said.