Rockwell Automation Inc.: CEO, CTO Meetings: Illuminating plant AI, in the City of Light

Research evidence excerpt

Rockwell Automation Inc.: CEO, CTO Meetings: Illuminating plant AI, in the City of Light

xed and mobile assets. Much of ROK’s work is focused on ensuring that this is done

efficiently, safely etc via agentic orchestration.

2. In manufacturing, there are numerous critical standards - safety and regulation

(cybersecurity) matter, as does domain expertise; hence, there is a competitive advantage

from being able to integrate all this into a solution for customers (as ROK does). This

criticality of standards in the manufacturing world differentiates it from more ‘corporate’ AI

uses such as AI chatbots for HR, that can be developed internally (displacing external SAAS

providers).

Some pillars of ROK’s AI strategy are:

1. Due to AI’s emergence, ROK can reinvent ‘automation’ as ‘autonomy’: AI allows for adaptive

systems whereby the machine / production line / plant can become autonomous - this suits

the growing sophistication of customers (who are solving for a range of needs such as

sustainability, safety, best cost, fast time to market etc). Software-defined architecture (SDA)

is critical here, and 80% of ROK’s engineering effort relates to software. ROK develops the

software app stand-alone, and can then tweak the application to different types of

hardware (vs the past where the hardware was focused on first). This trend is more

advanced in process industries, but is now expanding to discrete automation. SDA implies

some hardware changes, semiconductor changes etc which ROK already iterates in its

hardware roadmap.

2. Expand the Hardware offering: ROK is looking to reinvent its portfolio with AI e.g. at the

controller or sensor level, for instance so the products are more effective at predictive

maintenance, or can do more of the intelligence around machine vision etc.