IE meets Rockwell Automation CEO Blake Moret

At this year's Automation Fair in Chicago, Rockwell Automation CEO Blake Moret took a few minutes from the hustle and bustle of the McCormick Place conference centre to have a chat with Industry Europe's Steve Gislam. Their discussion covered a range of topics such as collaborations with other companies, changes in manufacturing and the evolution of Rockwell to meet the challenges of sustainability, climate change and Industry 4.0.

Industry Europe: How are you enjoying the fair so far?

Blake Moret: It's just a flurry of activity. I've been to almost all of them and this one will be the biggest and it’ll be the best. I think you'll be struck with how much the technology from the B2C is becoming part of the industrial technology as well.  When we talk about IT and OT (operational technology) converging, you’ll see that. The augmented reality glasses, standard communications protocols, security practices - all those things all are coming from the IT world. Even the business models. Service business models, which were very rare in industry and manufacturing in the past, you’re seeing those worlds coming together.

IE: Well on that note, I saw a press release this morning that Rockwell is to start working with Accenture. Do you want to tell us more?

BM: There are several facets of the relationship. When I was in sales a long time ago with Rockwell, we sometimes struggled to be able to quantify, in a credible way, the value of our automation offering, in terms of showing where it was on the income statement or balance sheet of our customers. That’s what Accenture does for a living, and they’re doing it at a very high level within our mutual customers. They also have systems integration capability, and some formidable technology of their own. They’re helpful with companies working for change management, as these companies transform their operations and so on. In terms of technology, market access and in terms of expertise it was really a good fit. Of course, traditionally they're a known as an IT player, and we're known for having our roots on the plant floor and we think this embodies that convergence.

IE: So, traditionally Rockwell is a manufacturer, but times are changing, and the company seem to be getting involved much more with software. The lines are coming together, and it seems like an indication of the direction that not just Rockwell, but the whole world is moving in.

BM: Yes, that’s right. Fundamentally we're a company that remains focused on productivity for industrial businesses, for their companies, processes and people. But more and more, software is becoming a large part of how you drive that productivity. It's not just about basic automation. That remains critically important, but taking the data from those basic operations and being able to use it to derive new insights to get that next level of productivity; That again is why that IT/OT convergence is so important. We remain focused on productivity, but the tools are changing from what they were decades ago.

IE: Even one decade ago.

BM: That's a great point because the pace of change is picking up. That's another thing that comes with IT coming down lower into the plant, so to speak. The pace of change picks up. I think to the extent that we can reduce the complexity of automation and integrating that with information and simplify those processes will help speed things up even further and then manufacturers will have an opportunity to really accelerate the pace of their realising productivity.

IE: What do you see as the biggest obstacles to this convergence?

BM: I think a lot of it is organisational. It’s organisations that didn't really work together in the past, either on the part of the industrial companies or on the part of the suppliers. For example, our IT organisation, because of the need to have infrastructure to deliver subscription-based software and to be able to have high service level agreement. Our IT organisation is becoming more a part of what we sell. In fact, our CIO (Chief Information Officer) was an executive with a one of our big customers. He was on the receiving end of this, so he's really helped us see some of the areas that we need to boost to be in the forefront here. But also in the customer organisation, you've got the manufacturing people, the process engineers, who understand what they’re trying to make, having to work with their IT personnel and to be able to explain how a service level agreement that’s good enough in the carpeted part of the plant won't be sufficient in the manufacturing area. Those are the cultural evolutions that have to take place.

IE: Yesterday, I was taken on a very interesting tour of the Method factory, whom Rockwell has been supplying a lot of the machinery to. As a company, they appear to be constantly tweaking their operations to maximise efficiency and cut out waste, and the equipment and software seems to be the key to this goal.

BM: Yes, that's right. And the know-how of course. One of the first steps is we apply Industry 4.0 and industrial IoT practices to light up the factory, so to speak - to be able to draw the attention to where the most wasteful parts of the operation are. Where you're wasting water, where you're wasting electricity and so on, to be able to make it more efficient. We've been doing that for a long time. Varying the speed of industrial motors, for example,  there's a huge efficiency and sustainability play. And it's more and more important for our customers and more important for us as well.

IE: I want to talk about waste and efficiency. A massive topic right now is of course, sustainability, carbon zero and so on. Can you tell me what Rockwell is doing now, and what the short and medium-term goals for this are?

BM: We hit our long-term goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% across our manufacturing footprint and we did it several years earlier than expected. We launched the initiative back in 2008 I think, and we actually hit that earlier than we had targeted. But more importantly is what we're doing for our customers. Our variable speed drive offering, again, varies the speed of motors and when you're applying those applications for fans and pumps there's a tremendous amount of energy savings. Inherently, we've been doing that for years. Our offerings in software, our monitoring of power usage, fortified with what we're doing with PTC, the software company we made an investment in a year and a half ago, has really accelerated our ability to make visible and to optimise those energy usages. It's primarily on the demand side of the energy equation.

IE: Technological development is coming so thick and fast now. In human history, there's never been a point like this, at least since the industrial revolution, and even then, things were happening more slowly. On top of that, the world is experiencing a lot of geopolitical issues: Brexit, trade wars, the rise of China, and so on. Do you see these as growing pains connected with the technological and global changes that the world is going through?

BM: I think there's a growing recognition of the importance of the manufacturing portion of the economy of countries around the world. So while the number of people directly employed by manufacturing may have reduced, if you look at the multiplier effect, countries like the US and certainly China, are recognising how crucial a vibrant manufacturing economy is to their overall well-being. So I do think that's part of what has raised the urgency in having free and fair trade guidelines between countries and we certainly support that. We think that we and our customers, by combining the technology that we're discussing with a highly engaged, prepared workforce can compete and win around the world. That’s what we're helping with. We're also helping with both sides of the equation. We obviously have the technology, but also workforce development. Helping to train our customers' people, being able to supply our customers with trained talent is something that we're moving into as well. That's an important part because for the first time we're seeing that the lack of skilled, typically technician level labour, be on the critical path for the approval of some of these projects. There are companies that are thinking twice about approving projects because they're not sure whether they're going to have the people to staff those processes.

IE: I was speaking with Karen Keegans (Senior Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer) and Tressa Knutson-Bruggink (Director, Internal Communications & Engagement) and they were talking exactly about this, and the challenges with STEM, especially women in STEM, and the way that they're looking at training or retraining people with a willingness and a drive to want to learn. This seems to be a challenge across the wider industry.

BM: We talk about, in our own employee population, being able to have employees who can and want to do the best work every day, so it speaks to the engagement and the preparation.

IE: They talked about the purpose-driven workplace for employees, and we also touched on diversity in the workplace.

BM: Diversity is critically important because diverse teams make better decisions period. It starts with the board and works right the way through the entire organisation.

IE: Like widening the gene pool?

BM: Yes, or as an old mechanical engineer, I’d say an alloy, where it's not just one element but you have multiple elements to make a stronger, more durable material.

IE: Rockwell is operational in 80 countries, which looks like it’s been expanded since your collaboration with Schlumberger. Can you tell us a little more about this partnership?

BM: Yes, our cooperation with Schlumberger expanded our presence internationally further. We've just concluded a quite successful first month in operation. We were talking for some time with Schlumberger to make sure we were organised correctly and with the right talent. We launched at the start of October and I like to think of it as blending the technologies and expertise important to petroleum engineering on one side, but then on process control and analytics on the other. Schlumberger certainly has some great technology in their own right but their domain expertise is second to none. So, by bringing together the strengths that we have in control - being able to take those insights and to be able to drive it into consistent automated processes, we think that we're providing something to the digital oil field that's unique in the market.

IE: The oil and gas industries gotten a reputation at being a little slow on the uptake in this field.

BM: It's interesting because the oil and gas companies in some parts of their operations have some of the most advanced technologies. Think about the seismic profiling and the exploration side. There's some amazing, high intensity, super-big data sets that are being analysed there. As well as in process control and refineries, it's very technical. But in the oilfield, particularly onshore oil field operations, there's a lot of manual processes still. So, what we're targeting is not so much the efficient drilling of new holes in the ground but taking that existing stream and being able to reduce the waste and the cost of producing a barrel of oil.

IE: To finish off, could you give me a few ideas about Rockwell’s direction in the medium to long-term future?

BM: We think that we are the best company in the world positioned in that convergence of IT and OT, and we're doing it in a way that will expand human possibility. It may sound a little strange for an automation company to talk about people, but they're our most important asset. It's the combination of highly engaged, prepared people working with the technology that helps our customers compete and win.

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