ABB reported Dec. 17 that a recent study by ARC Advisory Group confirmed that it's retained its market lead for the 21st year with an overall 19.2% of the $15 billion global DCS market, which puts it more than two percentage points ahead of its nearest competitor. The company claims it leads the field due to its domain knowledge in multiple industries, extensive service network and continuing investment in technology and digital solutions.
ABB adds the largest share of its DCS market growth in 2019 came from the oil and gas, chemicals, mining, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sectors, followed by food and beverage, metals, cement, and pulp and paper. With its two main DCS offerings, ABB Ability System 800xA and ABB Ability Symphony Plus, the firm has a strong presence in each of these segments. It adds it's also a leader in several of the report's key DCS trends, including modular automation, batch, characterizable I/O and remote services.
To create new control benefits, for example, by processing massive amounts of DCS data, ABB continues to develop new data analytics to increase production efficiency, and leverage machine learning that improves problem predictability and extends asset life.
A key focus of ABB’s annual $1.5 billion R&D budget is the further expansion of DCS and other digital and automation capabilities in the context of Industry 4.0. In July, ABB launched two offerings that use DCS data with value-added applications to improve production availability, process performance and product quality. ABB Ability Edgenius Operations Data Manager gleans value from DCS data, while ABB Ability GenixIndustrial Analytics and AI Suite combines data from operations (e.g. DCS), engineering and information technology for multi-dimensional data analytics and decision support.
Services experienced the highest growth in relation to software and hardware in the ARC report. This trend accelerated in 2020, which increase the need for remote services. One such service, ABB Ability Collaborative Operations, a remote-enabled network of ABB experts and technologies, uses many ABB DCS technologies to remotely monitor and support customer assets and processes. Experts at ABB Collaborative Operations centers globally are available 24/7 to assist users.
