Frost: Industrial Safety Systems Benefit from Operational Excellence Needs, Regulation Compliance

January 12, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS

Despite this, the process industry continues to work toward operational excellence while remaining competitive in the market by complying with safety regulations.

Analysts said with the global industry witnessing strong double-digit growth rates due to a large number of upcoming worldwide Greenfield projects, safety solution providers have the opportunity to cash in on this boom.

Recent analysis from Frost & Sullivan of the world safety systems markets for process industries found earned revenues of $1 billion in 2006, with estimates to reach $2.1 billion in 2013.

"With automation taking huge strides in process industries, safer working environments are inevitable," said Frost & Sullivan research analyst Muthuraman Ramasamy. "In particular, significant investments have been made in key end-user verticals such as oil and gas, chemical and petrochemicals and power."

These long-term investments should have a decreased total cost of ownership (TCO) and faster return on investment (ROI), analysts said, because end-users feel pressured to reduce costs while simultaneously improving the quality and supply of products.

Analysts said end-users welcome a system that addresses the underlying challenge of minimizing the trade-off between process uptime and process safety. In addition, end-users favor vendors that have significant technical experience in installing complex integrated safety solutions that monitor safety and non-safety functions, while reducing the costly channels of diversified communication.

"Safety system vendors can respond to this growing need by rapidly developing total integrated solutions to capitalize on this market," said Ramasamy. "Apart from offering integrated solutions with a superior value-cost proposition, market participants who have the ability to deploy solutions globally and introduce technologically advanced products that address market challenges will garner success in the safety systems for process industries market."

Increasing the predictability of safety system failure would enable end-users to prevent costly downtime, analysts said, thereby strengthening a system's value proposition. This predictability would have an indirect impact on process efficiency by improving the productivity, process uptime and output.

In order to achieve greater market penetration, market participants must also educate end-users on the benefits of technologically advanced safety systems over homegrown solutions. A regional analysis clearly demonstrates that Asia-Pacific will likely become a booming market for process safety due to strong growth in its scale of economies, analysts said.

Lucrative opportunities lie in legacy installations and the retrofit market, analysts said, where the demand for safety systems remains largely untapped. Solutions with open architecture and flexibility to adapt to different systems provided by various automation suppliers increase the acceptability level among end-users.

As a result, analysts said market participants should focus on understanding end-user requirements and processes to develop a system that strategically meets their critical safety demands and needs.

Source: Frost & Sullivan.