ABB celebrates 20-year milestone in DCS leadership

In a growing market expected to reach $17.4 billion globally by 2023, a market analysis report by the ARC Advisory Group, a leading industry analyst firm, confirms that ABB increased its share of the Distributed Control System (DCS) market to 20.0 percent, retaining its leadership position for the 20^th year running. 

According to the report, ABB’s strong presence in many end-user industries was a major factor in this success. The DCS market saw its main growth in oil & gas, chemicals and refining, where also ABB has a strong footprint.

“I want to thank our long-standing customers for their cooperation and loyalty over decades,” said Dr. Peter Terwiesch, President, ABB Industrial Automation. “Partnership and collaboration with our customers have shaped ABB’s automation offering and domain expertise into what it is today. I am also pleased that new customers, in traditional and new industries, are finding value in ABB’s DCS solutions.” The company grew its market share by 1.8 percent since 2008.

“Being independently verified as the global market leader in DCS for 20 years is an outstanding moment of pride for ABB, and a testament of our technology leadership and the strength of our long-term customer relations. We continue to invest in developments that extend the power of the DCS, to combine electrical and process automation, and help our customers leverage the era of digitalization with cloud and edge-based applications and services,” Terwiesch said.

“In dynamic, digitalizing industries, it’s challenging to maintain consistency with the fast pace of technology development and rapid market changes,” said Harry Forbes, Senior Analyst, ARC Advisory Group. “As analysts, it’s interesting to observe how ABB manages acquisitions, maintains installed bases and addresses the Internet of Things with consistency in DCS and other automation market spaces.”

In the process and hybrid industries, DCS are the heart of plant-level digitalization, helping producers to become more productive and profitable. They automatically control production processes, thus assuring high production availability, maximum asset utilization, increased process efficiency and optimum product quality. Ultimately, DCS enable safe, smart and sustainable goods production, power generation and water purification to enhance the lives of people around the world.  

ABB’s DCS is also a collaboration tool that integrates electrification, instrumentation, automation, telecommunications and safety. Supplementing its production role, data is gleaned from DCS to derive improvement actions that customer and ABB experts employ to drive plant and enterprise operations.

An example of the best-in-class technology that producers turn to is ABB’s single-channel Select I/O. With its digital marshalling capability, Select I/O allows users to engineer large capital projects with maximum flexibility and resilience to late changes, thus reducing cost, schedule and footprint. 

ARC’s report suggests that services are likely to be a fast-growing segment of the DCS market. In addition to traditional services, ABB invests heavily in remote-enabled, software-assisted services that are important contributors to DCS security, performance improvement and lifecycle evolution.

ABB is involved in industry bodies and user associations such as the Open Process Automation™ Forum, NAMUR, and OPC Foundation, to develop and promote open standards and interoperability, ensure customer-focused technology development and foster collaborative industry leadership. 

Looking ahead, emerging countries continue to be a key focus for market development. A resurgence of the global oil & gas upstream industry, expansion of the chemical industry in Asia, and development of the global Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) market are a few of the trends driving growth forecasts for DCS.