Production Monitoring Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The production monitoring market is expected to register a CAGR of 8.2% during the forecast period, 2021-2026. Due to a number of economic, radical, and market factors across the world, a significant revolution has been happening within the manufacturing industry. Both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in Industry 4.0 bridge the gap between the digital/cyber/virtual world and the physical world. VR and AR technology, when integrated into a factory environment and equipment via devices and sensors, can help keep track of the manufacturing processes and production. This helps optimize and enhance machine productivity (quantity, quality, speed, and flexibility), improving the overall ROI of the enterprise. In April 2020, Flex decided to enhance its global manufacturing processes and delivering customer solutions through augmented/virtual reality, which may help in design, usability, and product lifecycle management. Further implementations by other players may provide a future trend in the production monitoring market.

Key Highlights

• Demand for a centralized monitoring system with predictive maintenance of assets drives the market. Predictive maintenance has been adopted recently in the heavy manufacturing industry, such as predictive maintenance of a gas turbine, a vacuum pump, and an aircraft engine. Overall, the predictive maintenance framework is able to perform real-time detection, visualization, alert creation, as well as recommendations for fixes on different stages of the manufacturing process through the centralized system.
• Players are focused on implementing a solution that can be integrated with predictive maintenance. In April 2020, Kistler introduced a flexible, new amplifier for industrial applications and a miniature charge amplifier with IO-Link suitable for use in robotics, the packaging industry, the food and the beverage sector, and for OEMs. IO-Link technology supplies users with real-time data to monitor the condition of their plants and measurement chains through predictive maintenance.
• The adoption of IoT-based solution for control and monitoring of additive manufacturing processes drives the market. According to AMFG, as of 2019, the additive manufacturing industry was estimated to be worth over USD 9 billion, and it is further estimated to be worth more than the current market value in future. Additive manufacturing enables the fast, flexible, and cost-efficient production of parts directly from 3D CAD data. For the management of additive manufacturing machines, the application of beacon technology in the factory environment allows the communication of production indexes extracted from the machines via mobile devices and IoT (Internet of Things).
• Furthermore, two types of beacons can be used where some beacons can broadcast an entire URL, such as the beacons that follow the Eddystone-URL or Ephemeral URL standards. These beacons can directly send the machine HMI Internet Address. With the integration of IoT, the market for production monitoring signifies a potential growth in the coming future.
• The COVID-19 pandemic is growing the demand for production monitoring solutions integrated with cloud deployment for many end users, such as automotive, healthcare, and aerospace. The demand for medical equipment is growing significantly during this pandemic. In April 2020, India and Russia discussed facilitating the emergent needs of equipment on both sides as part of their efforts to contain COVID-19. Both sides decided to be in touch with monitoring and facilitating the emergent needs of the equipment. This inhibits the demand for software solutions mostly deployed through a cloud solution.
• Moreover, in April 2020, RecycleGO collaborated with Mask Force NYC to bring fast-track relief to healthcare providers due to the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. In less than 14 days, RecycleGO built a fast-track global supply chain and distribution network for Mask Force NYC. Once the masks arrived in New York in April, RecycleGO worked with Mask Force NYC to organize mask distribution logistics using its dual-system logistics operations software. This logistics software is used for dispatchers, mission control, and its route optimization application.
• However, data security concerns and privacy issues are challenging the market growth. Metals, capital goods, and electronics industries are fast becoming inclined to cybersecurity risks, as investments in manufacturing systems are incorporated with connected devices. Manufacturers have become more unsafe for cyber-attacks after shifting toward cloud infrastructure and services.
• The threat has now become very striking to the manufacturing sector, which faces risks from the hacking of the IoT investments to the intellectual IP theft from China and other countries. According to a recent study by Wipro, out of the total critical resources or assets offered on the Dark Web in 2019, 14% were from the manufacturing sector.

Key Market Trends

Automation and Control Management to Witness Significant Growth in Oil and Gas

• According to Forbes, the dependency of the oil and gas industry on automation increased in the last decade, which is further expected to double by 2020 with the increasing demand for crude oil. Initiatives to digitize oil fields are being implemented, which has led to investments in instrumentation to increase productivity and complete projects within defined budgets and timelines.
• The automation sector has evolved from supplying hardware equipment with aftermarket services to becoming more service-based and offering software tools that can translate huge volumes of data into meaningful, intelligent information that can be leveraged to make important business decisions. In April 2019, AeonX Limited (Nigeria) signed the oil and gas partnership agreement with WFS Technologies to promote and deliver the full range of state-of-the-art Seatooth products for asset integrity and flow assurance monitoring to the existing and new clients in Nigeria.
• Furthermore, one of the largest expenses for oil and gas companies comes through the process of drilling. Not only is drilling costly, but it is also highly technical and involves considerable safety risks for workers. Automating manual portions of that process, like pipe handling and pressure drilling, can significantly reduce safety risks and speed up the overall drilling process.
• In April 2020, Brazilian offshore drilling services provider, Ocyan, launched the Ocyan Waves program, where the offshore drilling platforms provide several supervisory systems that connect different equipment by sensors using automation. The systems are able to emit alarms when some equipment exceeds its minimum or maximum index, warning the operator that something is wrong.
• Furthermore, some companies have started using automated weather sensors to detect changes in seismic activity, as well as ocean and atmospheric levels. This can help predict when conditions are right for major natural weather events, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, thereby, enabling oil and gas companies to take the proper safety precautions in real-time. Due to a high degree of automation, the developed technology can be implemented as a geoinformation web service for all-weather up-to-the-date monitoring of oil extraction areas. This web service can be used to determine the area of fields, control production activity, and estimate oil production, supervise development and production activities, and assess anthropogenic load in oil production areas.
• The measurement of pressure and flow of oil is a task that can easily be improved through automation. Installing smart sensors can help in connecting to centralized monitoring software, thus, allowing pressure, flow, and level of oil to be reported remotely from the field, without the need for on-site crew. Upon receiving this information, rig crews can monitor and adjust the settings as needed.
• In April 2020, Yokogawa introduced AI-enabled versions of SMARTDAC+ Paperless Recorders and Data Logging Software, as well as Environmentally Robust AI-enabled e-RT3 Plus Edge Computing Platform, for industry applications, including oil and gas. Recorders used in manufacturing and R&D acquire, display, and record data on voltage, current, temperature, flow rate, pressure, and other process variables in the oil and gas industry.
• Furthermore, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the strategy to implement automation monitoring is increasing. In April 2020, a Finnish-Russian industrial digital solutions provider, Zyfra, stated that companies in the field of machinery, mining, and oil and gas from Russia and India should focus on speeding up their digital transformation. Zyfra also called upon the companies to jointly develop industrial digitalization technologies and share best practices to minimize the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on their businesses and supply chains. Hence, the demand for automation production monitoring is expected to significantly increase during the pandemic.

North America Accounts for Significant Market Share

• North America is the largest contributor to the production monitoring market, as the region is technologically advanced. The North American countries have developed infrastructure and skilled workforce, which help the production monitoring solution providers offer 24/7 support and maintenance to their clients.
• In the United States, most of the industries are sophisticated users of data analytics systems, and they are ready to deploy a new platform with new architecture and capabilities to monitor the production. Furthermore, players are focused on providing new solutions. In April 2020, Altair announced a major release of Panopticon, its comprehensive platform for user-driven monitoring and analysis of real-time trading and market data. These include operational data analytics applications in manufacturing, logistics, telecoms, oil and gas production, and energy distribution.
• Furthermore, companies in the United States, where employees are more than 100 in number, are adopting cloud-based applications. It has been estimated that nearly 35% of SMBs in the country have already deployed cloud solutions integrating with BPM (Business Process Optimization). This further holds the ptential for growth for production monitoring in the services segment.
• In March 2020, Sysdig Inc. announced cloud monitoring at scale with full Prometheus compatibility in the United States and Canada. It enables companies to confidently run cloud-native workloads in production. With the Sysdig Secure DevOps Platform, cloud teams embed security, validate compliance, and maximize performance and availability.
• Also, the launch of Predictive Maintenance-as-a-Service (PMaaS) by Rockwell Automation is assisting industries in the United States by providing service on critical assets identified by the customer, analyzing data from connected technologies, such as sensors, control systems, and smart machines, and identifying normal operations and build out data models to help predict, monitor, and mitigate future failures or issues as part of the preventive maintenance strategy.
• According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States may become a net energy exporter in 2020 and remain so throughout the projection period, as a result of large increases in the production of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas plant liquids (NGPL), coupled with slow growth in the US energy consumption. This factor is likely to boost the demand for production monitoring solutions at present and in future.
• Furthermore, in the most severe cases of COVID-19, the race to build more ventilators has seen automakers, like Ford, General Motors, and Tesla, morph into ventilator distributors and designers while helping medical device companies to scale up production of the critical equipment. While there were around 160,000-200,000 ventilators in the United States as of mid-March 2020, some health experts believe that as many as 1 million COVID-19 patients may need the devices in the country over the course of the pandemic. This further leads to the usage of production monitoring software to help these companies prevent the shortage in future, based on the situation.

Competitive Landscape

The production monitoring market is highly fragmented, and the major players have used various strategies, such as new product launches, agreements, and expansions, to increase their footprints in this market. Most businesses across the whole spectrum combine at least two or three different tools to monitor and run their production monitoring. The key players are Capgemini SE and Siemens AG, among others. Recent developments in the market are -

• Mar 2020 - NEC Corporation announced a collaboration with Siemens in the IoT field for providing a monitoring and analysis solution in manufacturing, which connects MindSphere, the cloud-based, open IoT operating system from Siemens, and the NEC's System Invariant Analysis Technology (SIAT). NEC is joining the MindSphere Partner Program to get access to specialized technical training and support from Siemens, as well as a number of joint go-to-market capabilities.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support