Singapore: Controls Center

June 26, 2006

Rockwell Automation selects Singapore as global HQ for several business segments.

Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation Inc., a $5 billion global provider of industrial automation power, control and information systems and services, is making a substantial new investment in Singapore, halfway around the world from its corporate headquarters in the United States.

Rockwell Automation's Asia Pacific Business Center in Singapore began operations in May 2006, as plans announced at the end of March called for. The center is to be fully operational by 2008, and Rockwell Automation expects to hire about 400 employees for R&D, engineering, marketing and manufacturing by 2008.

"This center will be the world headquarters for several business segments that are in demand in Asia and highly strategic to the company's global growth," said Steve Eisenbrown, senior vice president for Rockwell Automation's automation control and information group, as plans for the center were announced on March 30. "With its ideal location and outstanding logistics capability, this center expands our automation controls development footprint into one of the world's largest growth areas," he stated.

In 2005, markets in Asia and the Pacific produced $483 million in revenue for Rockwell Automation, according to company figures.

Rockwell Automation's Allen-Bradley brand of small logic controllers, MicroLogix controllers, distributed input/output modules, and component operator display product lines will be located at the Singapore center. Engineering and marketing for Rockwell Automation's component drives business will relocate to the Singapore center from Milwaukee. And a new R&D center for Rockwell Automation's Logix controller software will be established in Singapore. The company said it was putting manufacturing, engineering and marketing together in Singapore to improve time-to-market and customer support. It did not disclose the total amount of the investment.

"Singapore is a business-friendly location with a technically competent workforce and excellent education from Singaporean universities to help provide us with skilled professionals," Eisenbrown stated. "Singapore also has a strong legal and intellectual-property infrastructure that underpins this excellent business environment," he added.

The new center will complement Singapore's goal of doubling its manufacturing output by 2018, indicated Teo Ming Kian, chairman of Singapore's Economic Development Board. "Rockwell Automation is the largest independent industrial automation company in the world today, and its presence in Singapore is a definite boost to our standing as a major hub for automation and controls companies," Kian said. "The announcement [of the center] is a strong testimony towards Singapore's continued attractiveness as a manufacturing location and is in line with our Manufacturing 2018 vision."

Rockwell Automation has been in Singapore since 1991, with a regional sales and service support office, a training center and a regional marketing center.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.