The Collaborative Production Management Market for Process Manufacturing (CPM-P) is expected to exceed US$4 billion by 2013, according to a new study by the ARC Advisory Group in the US.
According to the Group, the CPM-P market is growing at a modest pace, but still growing amid the recession.
“The global economic slowdown has adversely affected nearly all of the process industries along with the suppliers of process automation technology. Despite the recession, however, the CPM-P market continues to grow albeit at a very modest pace,” said ARC senior analyst and author of ‘Collaborative Production Management Systems for the Process Industries Worldwide Outlook’, Tom Fiske.
Even during times of cutbacks and cost cutting, process manufacturers continue to invest in CPM-P projects that have a quick ROI and focus on improving efficiency, reducing costs, consolidating operations, complying with regulations, and standardising on applications across their enterprise, said Fiske.
CPM has three main areas of functionality that include plan, operate, and inform. The ‘plan’ segment consists of functions such as short-term production planning, plant simulation and modeling, and scheduling, says ARC.
The plan functions determine what products to make, when to make them, and what equipment to use. This segment emanates from the need to continuously find new and better ways to control process equipment and operate plants more efficiently, ARC says.
The purpose of the inform category is to gather, store, organise, and communicate data and information. It includes data collection, performance analysis, reporting, and role-based KPI visibility, the company says.