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Industrial automation is a large and growing market, driven by the convergence of AI, Industry 4.0, smart manufacturing, and clean energy investment. While hardware still dominates current revenues, software and data-centric solutions are capturing a growing share of spend and are expected to drive a disproportionate share of value creation through the decade. Long-term infrastructure and industrial capex plans, particularly in transport, energy, and digital networks, provide additional demand tailwinds.
Within this, process, factory, and warehouse automation sub‑segments show strong growth potential, expected to expand at healthy rates through 2030. However, this market growth has not been evenly reflected in company performance. Many European and U.S. players combine strong margin profiles with modest recent growth, while several Asian competitors are growing faster from a lower-margin base. Benchmarking reveals that, for some established players, automation revenues have lagged behind wider market growth over the past three years, and in some cases, declined in real terms.
Long, project‑based sales cycles, capital intensity, and skill shortages make it challenging to turn attractive market CAGRs into consistent, profitable top‑line expansion, implying that exposure to favourable themes is no longer sufficient. This highlights the need for focused value creation plans to address structural constraints and reposition business models.
AlixPartners has developed an integrated value-creation plan aimed at unlocking the sector’s full potential. Our experience highlights five critical levers that consistently drive performance and should form the foundation of any comprehensive value-creation plan:
- Strategic growth agenda and integrated go-to-market approach
- Alleviating supply chain fragility and working capital pressure
- Geographical footprint and capacity
- SG&A and operating model improvements
- Strategic M&A and portfolio management
View the value-creation plan below or access it as a PDF.
