Nosbusch on the New Rockwell

Keith Nosbusch, who has worked for Rockwell Automation most of his working life, and is now CEO took us on a tour of the "new and improved" Rockwell Automation. "We have always had a strong customer focus," he said, "but now we have a customer-centric culture." Apparently, a focus is not as good as a culture. And he may be right. It may be the difference between hunters and shepherds. Hunters focus on their prey, but shepherds identify with the flock, nurture it, and grow it, as the center of their being. "We were function/benefit oriented before," he went on, "and now we are learning the power of 'and.'" Somehow I got the image of "would you like fries with that?" when he said it, but again it is a valid goal. "We used to do cost-based pricing, but now we have the broadest and newest portfolio in the market for automation and information, and we still insist on quality." "We've moved from proprietary architecture to open architecture," he noted, "and from a single key buyer to multiple buying influences. And we've moved from balance sheet asset intensive to intellectual asset intensive corporate culture." "We've become," Nosbusch said, "a results oriented culture. Our goal of customer intimacy is now clearly a defensible long term strategy." Nosbusch shared that their goal from 2005 to 2008 is a growth of 8.5% CAGR. "We don't believe the traditional 80% capacity utilization trigger will work this time," he said,"but we see growth in energy related industries and life sciences." Nosbusch expects 11% organic growth, playing on strength in US, double digit growth in petrochemicals and power. "We've achieved a little over one point of this in price; achieved two points from our globalization effort; and taken an additional five points from several markets and share." "We have committed over $40M (an actual run rate of $80M) in growth intensive spending to achieve these results." The Logix platform is responsible for a significant amount of Rockwell's growth, Nosbusch said, with an expected '04-'08 CAGR of 25% %sales %growth NA 57% 30% EMEA 23% 15% AsiaPacific 15% 30% Latin America 5% 35% The biggest drivers are new functionality and market growth, with cannibalization of older PLC market sales lagging behind. For the first time, Rockwell is selling more Logix than traditional A/B PLCs. GuardLogix is Rockwell's attempt to break into the combined safety and control PLC market. In its first year, it produced 19% CAGR, and safety is growing faster than the other industrial markets. Another significant market is Batch/Hybrid plants, where RA is replacing legacy DCS! "We are a DCS supplier...except that we choose not to do refineries," Nosbusch quipped. Intelligent Motor control is also growing for RA because IMC = Energy Efficiency. This is a tremendous opportunity because less than 50% of all motor trains have intelligent motor control. Finally, in a reprise of Kevin Roach's keynote at ISA three weeks ago, Nosbusch gave a big push to Factory Talk, saying that Rockwell is the only people who can pull off a plant-floor-to-enterprise initiative, because they have all the installed base on the plant floor. Certainly there are other people who will rather strongly disagree. "We are investing to win here," Nosbusch declared. Rockwell, he stated, has a corporate goal that they will move from 70/30 USA/International to 50/50 by 2009. It will be quite interesting to see what happens as Yokogawa pushes the other way. The squeeze is clearly on. "We are moving our core business functions to Asia. We can't claim victory yet, but we intend to win. In 2006," he continued, " we will pick the spots where we are least disadvantaged: +life sciences/pharma +food +beverages and brewing +automotive +consumer goods.