Managing Automation - March 2009 - (Page 11)

“The notion of spending $200 million on a big program, then accruing the profit later, has been challenged for a long time,” Wilson said. — Jeff Moad ACCENTURE UNVEILS A SERVICE FOR THE FACTORY FLOOR or the past year, Accenture has quietly assembled an industrial automation business that will move the IT consulting and integration company onto the shop floor — an area in which it has never dabbled despite the company’s extensive work with manufacturers. Until recently, Accenture has concentrated solely on enterprise applications, including finance, marketing, and even the supply chain. But business and technology requirements have changed over the years, Accenture says, and manufacturers need an integrated organization that includes the production floor. Recognizing a gap in its own offering, Accenture acquired ATAN, a 20-year-old, privately held Brazilian company that employs about 450 engineers experienced in industrial IT, automation control, and instrumentation. The addition of ATAN’s ranks to Accenture’s global infrastructure, which includes about 180,000 people in 49 countries, has inspired the integrator to claim that manufacturers now have a partner that can address their technology needs from the shop floor to the top floor. The new services are delivered through the Accenture Automation and Industrial Solutions group, formed in July 2008 after the ATAN acquisition and publicly introduced at the ARC Advisory Group conference in Orlando, FL, last month. At the event, Accenture’s AIS group announced an alliance with CSense Systems, which allows Accenture to use the company’s Process Performance Enhancement suite, an analytics tool that provides a view into what is happening on the production floor. Accenture expects to ink other, similar deals, based on a strategy to have strong alliances with a few important vendors. It will also enter strategic and regional alliances with manufacturing technology vendors on a caseby-case basis in order to strengthen particular customer solutions, the company said. Clients are demanding to have one partner that can address the whole production chain, F said Ronald Munk, managing director of the Automation and Industrial Solutions group. And they need to have a unified approach, he said. “We see companies with operations in various parts of the world that are in [the middle of] a movement or, I would say, a trend, where they are beginning to standardize the way they manage and control their production facilities,” Munk said. “At Accenture, we have been successful helping clients to implement this type of global standardization of corporate programs for many years.” Now, Accenture can implement similar transformational programs at the plant level, he said. Accenture can optimize underperforming plants by doing a site assessment — based on a company’s existing methodology, tools, and resources — and then, by tapping into its newly acquired industrial engineering expertise, the integrator said it can come up with processes and metrics specific to automation and control. The goal is to deliver this quickly, get the return, and replicate the model across multiple facilities. Of course, many manufacturers go directly to their automation vendors for help with process optimization, but when it comes to integrating everything from the sensor to the boardroom, Accenture has an advantage, Munk said. “Accenture has an important asset in our relationships we’ve built with the C-level,” Munk said. “Having these top-floor relationships, complemented by the technical expertise at the plant level, puts us in a good position to help clients connect those two worlds.” — S.N. SOLAR IS BRIGHT SPOT FOR MES PLAYER EYELIT W hat’s the future of alternative forms of energy such as solar power? Though the price of oil has dropped significantly since the high prices of last summer, many people hope that interest — and investment — will continue in solar as well as so-called clean technologies. One technology company betting that the lesson of oil dependence has been well-learned is Eyelit, Inc. A developer of manufacturing execution software, Eyelit has been focusing much of its own energy on equipping solar companies with its technology in an attempt to 11 March 2009 http://www.managingautomation.com/summit http://www.managingautomation.com/summit

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - March 2009

Managing Automation - March 2009 Contents Take 1 Sober Outlook, Cost-Cutting Techniques Dominate at Automation Conference Sale Canceled, i2 Searches for Its Focus Accenture Unveils a Service for the Factory Floor Solar Is Bright Spot for MES Player Eyelit Other Industries Outspent Auto on Robots in 2008 Integrators to Play a Bigger Role at ILS Technology Notes Deep Dive Supply Chains Reader Poll Technology Directions Expert Q&A User Resources Special Report Transformation Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - March 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.