Re: Why is the Automation market declining?
Sep 20, 2000 9:14 am, by Bruce Axtell
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from Jim Pinto's message Answer : Sorry, folks - there will not be a return to normal. Please review again my comparison with "farming". Quote from the original article (please read it) : This is not an accident - it's part of the evolutionary process. Farming, which once employed a major segment of the population, now employs less than 2% in the US; there are few rich and innovative American farmers. Similarly, manufacturing employed over 35% in the US less than a century ago and this is steadily reducing to about 15% today. Jim: If you compare manufacturing against a century ago (1900) you should expect to see a decline in manufacturing. Much of today's manufacturing is going offshore to cheaper labor markets. To offset this, the demographics of the labor market has shifted to the service, data, and information industries, which are growing. Secondly, there was really no "automation" industry in the 1900s. Manufacturing-yes, automation-no. I haven't bothered to check it, but my guess is that manufacturing has increased from 1900 in Malaysia, Taiwan, Mexico, or most any other offshore country you would care to name, particularly in the last 35 years. Michael Griffin's post raised some of the same comments I have, so I won't reiterate, but technology also drives down sales dollar volume, which I think can be misleading. For example, What in the past may have taken a PLC, a communications module at each end of the link, etc. is now integrated into one package. I can buy a PC today for less money than I paid for my 286 in 1985, that includes a CD-RW, Ethernet card, modem, and DVD drive, floppy drive, more RAM, bigger hard drive, etc. In the past, many of these would have been options, and the price would have been much higher. Thus, more PC, more devices in it, less money. Many functions are melded into a single package, which sells for less than the individual components would have. So is sales dollar volume an accurate indicator, or just one of several indices that should be looked at in the big picture? Would units sold be a better indicator (e.g., number of starters, drives, etc.)? Wouldn't this partly explain the reason the automation folks are busier than ever, as pointed out by Michael Griffin, and yet the dollar volume is declining? Or maybe there are just fewer people doing the same amount of work that makes us so busy? Bruce Axtell
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