'Automation industry to grow 5.1 pc by 2010'

Kolkata, Dec 1 : The Indian automation industry is expected to grow 5.1 pc by 2010, said an industry expert at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) seminar here Tuesday.

'The automation industry grew at a rate of 3.6 pc in 2000-2005 and predicted a rise of about 5.1 pc by 2010,' said Rana Biswas, Technical Director, MN Dastur and Co Ltd.

'The need of the hour for control instrumentation and automation industries is to ensure asset control and cost effective increased production in chemical, heavy engineering and metallurgical sector with an assurance of quality control,' Biswas added.

CII organised a National Seminar on Control Instrumentation and Automation for Metallurgical Industries to focus on the latest trends in the applications of control instrumentation and automation for the metallurgical industries, advancement in technology and requirement of latest available technology by the metallurgical industry.

G K Pillai, CMD, Heavy Engineering Corporation Ltd. and Vice Chairman, CII Jharkhand Zonal Committee, said it's high time to reduce green house gases through more and more automation.

Emphasizing on increasing productivity through cleaner technology to attain both social and environmental objectives, Pillai referred that by 2020, the estimated steel production in India has been targeted to be around 200 million tones and successful automation will play a major role in energy conservation, saving of gigacalories and reduce global warming.

Meanwhile, K Nandakumar, Chairman, CII Instrumentation and Automation Div. and Managing Director, Chemtrols Industries Ltd said the present size of Control Instrumentation industry is USD 130 billion and will attain 5 pc share of the World market by 2015.

'The greatest challenge for automation industry is the increasing national competitiveness in R and D. He also mentioned that Government has taken up lots of initiatives like developing centre of excellence in designing, encouraging value added manufacturing, creating world class infrastructure, encouraging resource sharing through industry clusters and by drawing up industry standards,' Nandakumar said.

He said for successful innovation in the automation industry, it is necessary to have regular exchange platform between innovators and users.

Sajiv Nath, Managing Director, Endress + Hauser (India) Pvt. Ltd. said steel production was high by 6.6 pc this year in comparison to the corresponding period of the last year but the reduced demand had affected the steel industry.

'In this respect the immediate challenge for automation industry is to protect their home market from global suppliers and so to sustain in this competitive market, IT solutions, automation instrumentation are required to maximize asset utilization and energy conservation,' Nath said.

He opined that the modernization roadmap should start with concept engineering and regular review system. He also recommended for extensive automation to go beyond comparative advantages and to achieve global benchmarks.