Rockwell acquires German process ERP firm

Factory automation specialist Rockwell Automation last month announced its intentions to acquire German enterprise (ERP) software vendor, Propack Data. The deal should be finalised by the end of March. According to Rockwell’s European marketing director Steve Darnell: “This means we’re the only supplier in this space [pharmaceuticals] that can offer clients software solutions across the entire product life cycle, from development, clinical trials and scale-up through manufacturing.” Indeed Propack does have a strong presence in the European pharmaceuticals industry. It has a presence in Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Switzerland, employs 230 staff and boasts nine of the world’s top 10 pharmaceuticals companies including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Aventis and Eli Lilly. The size of the pharmaceuticals market is roughly $1 billion per year. Darnell states: “The overall process market is $12 billion a year. Pharmaceuticals is a high growth market with more than 8% annual growth rate. And within the intermediate part of pharmaceutical manufacturing the combined annual growth rate is about 45% for systems and services.” Don Davis, Rockwell chairman and ceo, commented on the deal: “It expands our reach into the $50 billion manufacturing information market serving other industries such as food and beverage, life sciences and cosmetics.” Rockwell’s competition will be tough though – the likes of ABB (Base Ten), Emerson (Fisher Rosemount and Intellution), Honeywell (POMS), Siemens (Orsi Compex) and Invensys (Foxboro and Wonderware) – will all claim similar depth of product offering for end users. “Data transparency from the plant floor to the supply chain level will be a key deliverable,” adds Darnell. “Propack will become part of our Process Solutions business… Propack’s current user base will benefit as Rockwell and Propack engineers start to co-develop the infrastructure for wider integration of the product lines. “Specific opportunities for early integration are: RSBizWare Batch for a true S88 execution engine; RSLinx for OPC communications; RSView for plant floor visualisation; and RSHistorian for continuous data records,” said Darnell. “Later, we’ll start linking Propack’s products using our FactoryTalk initiative – clients will see a more value from packaged integration at several levels.”