Jim Pinto

• Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and commentator, writer, entrepreneur, investor and futurist. Read his predictions, as well as excerpts from his book, Pinto’s Points, at www.jimpinto.com.

1. Industrial wireless.
Wireless is an enabling technology for new applications beyond just wire replacement. The new ISA standard has finally been tested and approved; this will, hopefully, stimulate broader applications for a variety of end users. My hunch is that new applications, with changed processes and procedures, will adapt to the new wireless capabilities. This could generate revenue breakthroughs for burgeoning wireless networking technologies waiting in the wings. We’ll see more wireless products announced in this coming year, and it could spark a new phase of growth that will re-energize industrial automation.

2. Embedded intelligence and M2M.
The “pervasive Internet” is still emerging, and in spite of the economic slowdown, will burst through in the coming decade with a plethora of products and applications. Embedded intelligence and connectivity is what machine-to-machine (M2M) is all about. Large assets will include self-monitoring procedures, reporting up the hierarchy with information such as uptime and downtime, diagnostics, usage and failure patterns, and more. All this invisible information about assets, costs and liabilities will become available at an affordable price, generating new revenue growth for leaders.

3. Cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS).
This is a burgeoning new area in the commercial and office business environments, and growth will spill over into factories and process plants. All but the most critical components will be run “in the cloud” — it’s simply a matter of how local or how distant the hardware and software resources are located. The switch to cloud resources will occur because of the growing obsolescence of capitalized hardware, plus continuing support for rapidly changing software. Something’s got to give, and what will change is the mix of local, capitalized hardware and software versus cloud resources. Albeit with some lag, industrial automation will follow the growth in this fast-growing arena.

4. Plant and factory security systems.
Most of today’s automation and control systems use the same hardware (Intel), operating system (Windows) and communications (Ethernet TCP/IP) as broadly deployed personal, corporate office and administrative networks. This generates steadily increasing problems. Worms and trojans can enter through mainstream operating systems and software, plus there may be deliberate external or internal intrusion. Good network security environments include high-security routers and firewalls that block outside intrusion but do not affect required performance. Automation-systems security has become an urgent issue, perhaps even a critical one. Providers of effective security protection solutions and services will generate good growth over the next several years.

5. Robots are coming.
Robots with integrated vision and touch dramatically changes the speed and efficiency of new production and delivery systems. Robots have become so accurate they can be applied where manual operations are no longer a viable option. The biggest change in industrial robots is that they will evolve into a broader variety of structures and mechanisms. In many cases, configurations that evolve into new automation systems won’t be immediately recognizable as robots. For example, robots that automate semiconductor manufacturing already look quite different from those used in automotive plants.