It takes a lot more than a few strategic acquisitions to turn a hardware company into a software company. It actually requires a transformation in culture and talent, a feat not to be taken lightly. Just ask the executives at Rockwell Automation, who have been executing the commitment required to position the company in new market segments while innovating around applications.
That's the message that came through during Rockwell's RSTechED and Manufacturing 2.0 event, which took place in Orlando in June. Company executives highlighted some of the critical acquisitions that started in earnest in November 2005 when the automation vendor scooped up Datasweep, a purveyor of MES applications. Since then, Rockwell has made a handful of process-oriented acquisitions, the most recent being Pavilion Technologies, which makes predictive modeling software, and manufacturing intelligence provider Incuity.
While it's not unusual for automation vendors to diversify their product portfolios with application offerings based on such technologies as MES, analytics, and manufacturing intelligence, Rockwell has taken its commitment a step further, industry watchers said, by adopting cutting-edge software development techniques. Also, the company is moving into the area of business process management (BPM), a large leap for a vendor often pigeonholed as a PLC company.
"The challenge is that they want to be a big software company, but they've got the old Rockwell culture that they still have to deal with," said Greg Gorbach, vice president of collaborative manufacturing at ARC Advisory Group. "It's always a challenge to [build] a software company culture and business model within a fundamentally hardware company, but Rockwell is doing a lot of interesting things, like using the Scrum development technique."
The Scrum concept, created in 1993, takes a lean approach to software development. The development framework is structured in cycles of work, called "sprints," which are iterations of work that typically last two to four weeks. Developers work collaboratively, and in each sprint the teams pull from a prioritized list of customer requirements so that the features developed first are of the highest value to the customer.
Rockwell has trained more than 600 people and invested "a boatload of money" in the Scrum methodology, said Kevin Roach, vice president of Rockwell Software, during a press conference. "This is our most recent focus because beyond process rigor we want to gain speed and innovation," he said.
The Scrum system can deliver more relevant products faster, enabling software developers to respond to changes in technology and deliver products at a lower cost, Roach said. For example, this fall, the company will launch a thin client version of its FactoryTalk HMI application that was developed using Scrum. Development took a fraction of the time that it would have taken engineers in the past, officials said.
This approach will also help the company integrate new acquisitions into the product portfolio and build out the company's vision to deliver a holistic suite of plant-wide information systems.
The Rockwell software suite, however, needs additional layers of structure, which is why the company is investing in a workflow engine that will incorporate business process mapping within its FactoryTalk ProductionCentre plant management software. Rockwell officials said the company is working with partners and will deliver the first glimpse of a BPM offering within six months.