This is not a good time to be a forecaster. Whereas last summer they were dealing with Donald Rumsfeld’s “known unknowns,” we’ve clearly now moved into the realms of his “unknown unknowns.” As a result, as automation industry leaders were packing their swim wear and shades ready for ARC’s annual Orlando forum, ARC’s own analysts were hard at work preparing fresh five-year national, regional and global market forecasts for more than 40 different automation and supply chain products to take into account the current economic turmoil. Moreover the implication of ARC president Andy Chatha’s comments is that they’ll pretty soon be updating them in real time. “No one could predict either the rapid progression or severity of the current economic downturn, which has drawn both the U.S. and Europe into recession, resulted in negative growth in Japan, dramatically slowed growth in both China and India, and ground Brazil’s previously robust economy to a halt,” said Chatha. “Since many of our clients are now scrambling to adjust their own marketing plans to account for the current downturn, it’s critically important that they have market data at their fingertips that more accurately reflects what’s really going on out there.”
The new forecasts will be made available to ARC’s clients via its on-line Market Intelligence Service (MIS) which provides subscribers with the most up-to-date data within a searchable relational database.
