“Motor services have transformed from a regular maintenance solution that can increase the lifespan of motors into a strategic business discipline, which can improve the overall efficiency of the asset. Increased technological changes such as predictive maintenance systems and bundled service package options provided by motor manufacturers are some of the key driving factors”, observes Research Analyst Raaj Thilak Raveendran in a recent briefing to motor manufacturers, private service providers, service partners and consultants win the European motor services market.

EU motor services market grew at a healthy rate in 2011, but the outlook for 2012 is gloomy due to the impact of the ongoing debt crisis in Europe. The need to improve uptime, increase plant profitability, process efficiency and complexity of the manufacturing process resulted in the need for increased service requirements.

Adoption of motor management, predictive maintenance systems and online data capture are the key growth factors. However, high competition between the private service companies and tier 1 companies triggers a price war that indirectly affects the total revenue of the services segment.

Highlights of the briefing included analyses of technology trends, competitive structure, customer expectation and end-user trends related to the motor services segment.

Listen here: http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/analyst-briefing-detail.pag?mode=open&sid=259989164

The European integrated motors and drives (IMD) market has recently recorded consistently high growth rates, except in 2009 when it was affected by the economic recession. During that year, the European IMD market witnessed greater decline in demand (about 14%), compared to the global IMD market (about 13%).

However, with numerous drivers and fewer addressable challenges, the European IMD market is ready to bounce back. Frost & Sullivan anticipates a cumulative annual growth rate of 12.1% from 2010 to 2017.

“The demand for high efficiency, along with the need to reduce energy consumption, is set to attract investments in IMD solutions,” notes Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Ramasubramanian Natarajan. “Heightened knowledge about their potential benefits will extend the implementation of IMDs across an extensive range of industrial applications.”

IMDs are expected to gain preference over stand-alone motors and drives over the long-term. This, however, will depend on anticipated technological advancements in functionality and the availability of the technology at an affordable cost.

“The optimal compatibility of the variable frequency drive (VFD) with the motor in an IMD ensures efficient performance, with efficiency levels exceeding 90%,” remarks Ramasubramanian. “This also makes IMD units easier to deploy than procuring motor and drive as two separate components and then combining them to achieve desired performance. It also reduces lag time and increases productivity.”

While these are positive signs, the immediate challenge for IMD manufacturers will be to scale down high initial costs and project product benefits more clearly to end-users. Another issue has been the technical inability, so far, to develop IMDs for higher power ratings.

“Due to technological limitations, above a certain point, the physical size of the product makes the integration of motor and drives lose its meaning,” explains Ramasubramanian. “While VFD solutions are in position to meet customer demands for higher power rating applications, IMD solutions are not perceived to be cost-effective at high power levels, thereby limiting the overall growth potential of the market.”

Technological advances and their availability across a range of power ratings will lead to the deeper penetration of IMDs into a wider range of applications. This, in turn, will boost customer acceptance of the technology. Competitive price levels will also contribute to encouraging demand for integrated motors and drives across key end-user industry segments.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the European Market for Integrated Motors and Drives market earned revenues of $285.3 million in 2010 and estimates this to reach $632.8 million in 2017. The research covers AC, DC, servo and stepper integrated motors and drives.

If you are interested in more information on this study, please send an email with your contact details to Anna Zanchi, Corporate Communications, at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The European programmable logic controllers (PLC) market witnessed a heavy decline in growth in 2009, owing to the recession of 2008. However, it made a strong recovery in 2010 with all major market participants in Europe experiencing high growth.

The sovereign debt crisis afflicting the Eurozone will determine the future prospects of the European PLC market. In the meantime, however, the market is likely to grow steadily over the forecast period aided by the emergence of major Eastern European economies as manufacturing hubs for the rest of Europe. The EU PLC market will add over €1B in revenues, reaching €2.6B in 2017 from its 2010 €1.6B base.

The research firm Frost & Sullivan explains their enthusiasm:. “The global economic crisis and the sovereign debt crisis of Europe have created an atmosphere of uncertainty, with fewer projects expected in the next 2 years,” begins company representative Karthik Sundaram.

But the major trend defining the market will be increasing end user concerns over cyber security.

“Cyber security is expected to be the key parameter in safety regulations and standards that are about to be introduced in January 2012,” explains Sundaram.

On the competitive front, intense competition between tier-1 companies is causing dramatic improvements in the PLC market, leading to the emergence of new products with improved design and control capabilities that surpass traditional definitions.

If you are in the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) business, the recovery from the downturn happened much earlier than had been generally expected. Most PLC suppliers were pessimistic on their future business after the economic crisis of 2009 and thought their business would not recover to the level of 2008 until 2013. However, in the event, their business was back on track three years earlier than they had expected; in some countries in developing regions, such as China and India, revenues had grown even in 2009. Overall global revenues from PLCs in 2010 were nearly 30% higher than in 2009, reaching an estimated at 8.2 billion US dollars.

“Although the recovery was unexpected, it is not hard to explain,” said Alex Hong, market research analyst in IMS Research’s industrial factory automation group, “The demand for automation products in many ongoing projects stagnated when investment funding dried up in the economic downturn.  However, government economic stimulus in several countries helped to make money more available at different levels of industry.” The customers for PLC manufacturers, mostly builders or users of industrial machinery, had more access to funding to purchase more PLCs and other automation products to continue with their projects. Both the restart of projects discontinued in 2009 and the start of new ones contributed to the high growth of the PLC market in 2010.

Moving forward growth continued in 2011, though at a lower rate than in 2010. Global PLC revenues have remained high in 2011. However, the industrial markets differed by region. In Europe, despite the continuing and worsening Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the most important market for industrial automation products – Germany - continued to grow at a healthy rate. In the Americas, large projects from some end-users and growing domestic demand enabled the PLC market to grow, though the market in Latin Americas is still underdeveloped. In Asia, the markets in the growing economies of China and India have performed quite well, though that of Japan was hit by the consequences of the earthquake earlier in the year. In general, the growth of the global economy in 2011 underpinned the global growth of the PC market.

However, PLC suppliers and their industrial customers are currently very uncertain whether growth will continue into 2012, considering the risks to the world economy. Many factors, such as Europe’s unresolved sovereign debt crisis, tightening economic policy in China, and the consequences of the earthquake in Japan and the recent floods in Thailand, are affecting the market.  However, IMS Research believes that the PLC market will still grow in 2012, mainly because many large and important PLC markets, such as Germany, France, China and the US, are still performing well at the turn of the year. In addition, emerging markets, such as Brazil, and India, which already account for half the entire PLC market, will be the main driving force for future growth.