Global Process Automation Market (2013 – 2018) august 2014 | Page 14

4. GLOBAL OPTICAL SENSORS – MARKET FORCES
4.1. MARKET DRIVERS
4.1.1. Increasing Labor Costs and Need for Improving Product Production Rates
Increasing labor charges is a concern for the emerging markets. Emerging countries are focusing
and investing in education sector and hence the literacy rates are going up. This leads to lesser
labors in these regions. The number of labors retiring is much more than the number of labors
replacing them. These new labors that are joining have an upper hand to negotiate their wages
with the industries. All of this has created a question of concern for the industries as their
production cost goes up and the quality is also not ensured. China for example which became
the global manufacturing super power, primarily due to its cheap labor availability is slowly
losing its edge due to rise in labor wages, lack of labor pool for industries with expansion plans
and also strict enforcement of labor laws by government as well as auditing by the device OEMs.
To avoid this, many industries are ready to make one time investment and migrate to the
automated process plant. This ensures better quality, quantity, less downtime, less energy
consumption and many other benefits.
Increasing consumer demand for products which are cheaper has been further augmented by
competitive pricing and pressures in the individual industry verticals. Companies need to
increase automation at each stage and where possible implement it completely to survive and
grow their market share.
The impact is medium in the current scenario but is expected to increase slowly owing to the
decrease in the labor force. Modernization & migration services are expected to slow down in
the upcoming years, which will indicate that the market is maturing and most of the industries
will be automated.

6.2. INSTRUMENTATION AND CONTROLS
Process instrumentation is the market segment which includes field instruments that measure,
transmit and control a process in process based industries like petrochemical, oil & gas, mining,
chemical etc. Transmitters in the flow, temperature, pressure and level measurement fields are
included in this market segment. Key sensor types like force or strain sensors, displacement or
position sensors and speed sensors are also covered in this segment. These instruments play a
vital part in the field, and can be controlled or automated from the control room.

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