The ARC Advisory Group Forum held every February in Orlando, Florida has become the most prestigious meeting in the automation industry. This year, the Industrial Automation INSIDER is a media sponsor of the event and will have reporters there to bring our readers in-depth coverage of the conference, and the hallway conversations that are, to some, even more important than the conference program. Attending, from the INSIDER will be David Spitzer, Walt Boyes and Joy Ward.
The Forum begins on Monday, February 10, with an entire afternoon of press conferences. INSIDER will be attending and reporting on those conferences. Beginning on Tuesday the 11th, the conference opens with keynotes by Andy Chatha, President of ARC, Christine Healy from Statoil and Donovan Waller from Anglo American followed by an executive panel consisting of Chatha, Mike Caliel, the CEO of Invensys, and Sandy Taylor, the new senior group vice president for process automation at ABB, discussing the state of the industry.
The theme of the conference this year is “Industry in Transition: The Information Driven Enterprise in a Connected World,” and as Andy Chatha’s commentary says, “The business environment is increasingly dynamic and volatile. New business models such as the Information Driven Enterprise, Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet, and Connected Manufacturing are emerging. In addition to a host of potentially disruptive technologies, companies must also face rapid changes in government regulations, energy and raw material availability and fierce global competition.”
ARC has put together a globally significant group of speakers from a wide set of industry verticals, ranging from Anglo American Mining to Boeing to Mallinkrodt, and all the major automation vendors, of course.
One major topic area is Industrial Cybersecurity, including discussions of how to secure the Internet of Things. We note that the thrust of the proposed sessions is primarily IT-focused, not plant floor and device focused, and that will give us the opportunity to ask some pointed questions about IT versus OT in security.
Another fascinating topic area is that of “additive manufacturing” which is sometimes known as 3D printing. Companies are already using these techniques in low volume manufacturing builds. ARC will be talking about Asset Lifecycle Management, Collaborative Automation Systems, and the rest of the usual suspects.
New topics of interest include the Internet of Things and Cloud Computing, both having been adopted rapidly in the face of the reputation of the automation and process industries for being late adopters of technology.
Finally, and perhaps we’ll find most importantly, the topic of workforce development comes up over again. How do we develop the workforce of the future to deal with the changing technologies they’ll be asked to use, without really being sure what those technologies will be?
The INSIDER will report, and provide analysis and commentary in our March edition, and, for the first time, the Insider will be doing video interviews of Forum participants. Look for this on the INSIDER website and on YouTube. Walt Boyes’ Soundoff! blog will be covering the Forum, and we will be tweeting from the meeting.
If you want to be a video interview, please let Joy Ward know at joyward@sbcglobal.net. If you want to meet with an INSIDER staffer let me know at waltboyes@spitzerandboyes.com. We are looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.