Bengaluru, February 26, 2015: US based Rockwell Automation Inc with over $6.62 billion dedicated to Industrial Automation and information is focussing on further expanding it's global footprint on the biggest emerging markets like India, China and South East Asia. The company employs over 20,000 professionals globally, with almost a thousand based out of India.

On the backdrop of hosting India's largest Automation Event, Rockwell Automation has announced its partnership with Microsoft and Cisco for joint solution development and integrated solutions and services at a conference. These collaborative efforts shall result in better asset optimisation and broader risk management for industrial companies.

Mr Dilip Sawhney, Managing Director, Rockwell Automation India, emphasised, "Increasing awareness of automation benefits in manufacturing shows a lot of scope for automation in manufacturing as the industry is realising the vast benefits of automation. Also, as the penetration of automation in manufacturing in India is low, this leaves vast potential for industry to adopt automation for increasing productivity, improving decision making, quality, and innovating processes. In the light of "Make in India" vision of Government, manufacturing will be getting a boost thus giving scope to more adoption of automation in manufacturing for industry to remain competitive also."

Speaking about the Rockwell R&D facility in Bangalore, Mr Sawhney added, "The only R&D Centre of Rockwell is based in Bangalore because of the cross-cultural nature of the city, high performance, quality chip design ability, power electronics, signal detection, easier to wrap up and scale up."

'Customer Briefing Centres' for the Manufacturing Industry

RAOTM (Rockwell Automation On the Move) is an exclusive annual event that brings together the best and brightest thinkers, practitioners, and innovators from business and academia to accelerate the market adoption .The theme of Rockwell Automation on the Move 2015 is "The Connected Enterprise". The implementation of the Connected Enterprise will drive more change in Industrial Operations in the next 10 years than in the past 50 years. Companies continue to face challenging markets across all industries. With ever increasing global competition, manufacturers must find new ways to optimise operations and achieve higher level of productivity. The Connected Enterprise shall transform manufacturing and provide tangible business benefits through convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operations Technology (OT). Today, less than 14% of manufacturers have connected their machines to the Enterprise Network and only a few progressive manufacturers have bridged the IT & OT divide.

"Rockwell Automation on the Move 2015 is a commitment to help manufacturers gain the competitive advantage they need to succeed and grow. Every manufacturer shall enter and progress through the stages of The Connected Enterprise that is most appropriate for it, at a pace determined by its own needs, infrastructure, readiness and resources. It is critically important for Rockwell's customers (manufacturers) to experience what its offerings are, and hence looking at creating customer briefing centres to take its solutions closer to their hearts," said Dilip Sawhney.

Addressing the plenary session of the conference, Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC, and Dilip Sawhney said that both the companies are committed to being the most valuable resources in the industry for helping and guarding manufacturers to improve business performance by bridging the technical & cultural gaps between plant floor and higher level information systems and enterprise. This would result in increased profits and job opportunities. It was further emphasised that, "Manufacturing is tightly linked to overall business processes for the enterprise. This has manifested itself in a convergence of IT and automation technologies, driving real time decision making from demand fulfilment back through the supply chain. We have seen great gains in productivity as a result, smart manufacturing is a fundamental need for all manufacturers".

Modern Automation Technology, from an engineer's perspective, now broadly encompasses Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, good amount of Instrumentation, Communication Engineering and Lots of Real Time Software (IT). The revolution in the Enterprise Area, the emergence of IT in manufacturing, Information Systems and MES to connect Automation to Enterprise and finally the role of Social, Media, Mobility, Analytics, Cloud (SMAC) has changed the way the manufacturing and automation companies look at Automation.

The R&D Centre under the OES Group started in March 2010 with 5 ASIC Engineers is head quartered in Bengaluru. Today it has grown to a 33-member team with over 6 functions including ASIC, ECAD, PCB schematic and layout, signal integrity, component engineering and engineering data management. The R&D Centre also has 4 process enabled IA stations - each fully capable to run process core and IA programs.