A look ahead for industrial automation: a strategic lever for business performance and meeting net zero goals, and how the industrial automation architecture is changing to offer boundless automation

Coming off the heels of Emerson Exchange and on the cusp of the new year, I am excited for the future and the opportunities that lie ahead for our customers. At this year's Exchange - our first in-person conference for customers and partners in three years - we talked about the role of automation to solve both business and environmental challenges. We know technology is most powerful when it has a clear business problem to solve, and that translates to also leaving our children and grandchildren a habitable planet.

Automation has never been as critical for our customers as it is today and automation professionals have an increasingly important role to play as the boundaries between operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) blur to help solve critical problems. Emerson has stood at the forefront of industrial automation innovation breakthroughs for the past four decades and today, we are accelerating our leadership position as we continue our journey to becoming a pure-play automation company serving diversified industrial, municipal and manufacturing markets.

As an automation leader, we can help our customers solve the growing puzzle that vital data has become in industrial settings. Global manufacturers depend on vast amounts of data - created by intelligent field devices and harnessed for action by advanced control systems, analytics, software and cloud-based applications - to run their facilities reliably, safely and profitably. Emerson's Plantweb digital ecosystem, enhanced by expanded software capabilities from AspenTech, has been at the forefront of helping companies implement digital transformation programs for optimal business performance.

As companies implement new digital technologies, however, they face a major challenge: a glut of valuable data that is siloed and not reaching the right experts. That's why Emerson is reimagining the industrial automation architecture with a vision of 'boundless automation.'

Emerson's vision includes a software-defined architecture that democratizes critical data and unifies cloud, edge and intelligent field data for analysis, trending and forecasting. The future industrial automation architecture will give companies unprecedented flexibility to generate, manage and use the exponential amount of data plants generate. And moving this data freely and securely across OT and IT domains - when and where it's needed, from the intelligent field to the edge and cloud - will create boundless automation opportunities to optimize operational, business and sustainability performance.

Automation for Sustainability

While developed to automate and improve performance at facilities, advanced automation technologies also are critical to help our customers reduce emissions, lower energy use, put more renewables on the grid, and advance new markets like hydrogen and biofuels - helping advance a more sustainable world.

Meeting sustainability metrics is increasingly important to a company's overall business performance. In fact, a recent Emerson survey of nearly 150 industrial executives found the majority of sustainability (94%) and operations (68%) leaders agree sustainability is becoming a central metric of company performance. The majority of these leaders with net zero goals agree that being unable to demonstrate measurable progress would put their company at risk.

Our customers shared their journeys during Exchange's first-ever Sustainability Summit focused on sustainability's impact on capital investments and the role of technology in achieving decarbonization goals. Their insights were invaluable and showed how tangible these results are, through the impact of automation.

Touting the importance of a "born digital" focus, PureCycle Technologies CEO Dustin Olson shared his vision to up-end plastics recycling and create a circular economy for the most widely used plastics. Similarly, Origin Materials, which converts wood residues into materials used in plastics, carpets and tires, is building its first manufacturing facility with the most advanced automation for operational excellence.

Mexico-based Braskem Idesa is implementing a digital transformation program designed to meet both business and sustainability performance metrics. And Mitsubishi Power is building the world's largest green hydrogen production and storage facility, designed to help stabilize the grid with sustainable sources. Mitsubishi will leverage Emerson's hydrogen production experience and automation software expertise to increase safety, decrease costs and simplify maintenance across the life cycle of the facility.

These exceptional examples reinforced: It's an exciting time for Emerson. As we become a pure-play automation organization, bolstered by the strength of our majority stake in AspenTech, we are uniquely positioned to help manufacturers in essential industries around the world as they advance their digital transformation and sustainability goals.

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