倒金

The last three decades have not been kind to the once proud process automation industry in the United Kingdom. Few traces now remain of the George Kent Group within ABB or of GEC Elliott Process Automation within Emerson Process Management. Still less of Ferranti, driven into bankruptcy a decade ago as a result of its merger with International Signal and Control Group (ISCG). And while it’s true that the more chauvinistic Brit can claim Invensys for his or her own—after all, it’s quoted on the London Stock Exchange and has its headquarters here—its recent performance provides little to be proud of.

Still, it’s not all gloom and doom. Take the case of Industrial Control Services (ICS), the “mini-conglomerate” put together in the late 1990s and made up of Max Controls, the former Leeds & Northrup distributed control systems business; Triple Modular Redundant (TMR) safety specialist ICS Triplex; and Transmitton, which supplies supervisory control and data acquisition systems to the oil & gas and railway industries.

底部馈线？

ICS在2000年遭受了巨大的损失，并且在风险资本家炼金术合作伙伴将其私下私有化时，违反了一个众多股份的股东的意愿，即使是每股1便士的股份，1便士比其他任何东西都要好。

炼金术的美誉”feeder” in some quarters, but the ICS experience seems to have been largely positive. True, Max Controls was sold on within weeks to the Finnish group Metso, but Alchemy, through its Tritrax acquisition vehicle, continues to own 96 percent of the equity in ICS, and to invest in both ICS Triplex and Transmitton. ICS Triplex acquired Altersys, the Canadian developer of the ISaGRAF IEC61131 programming package, back in February 2003, and earlier this year, Transmitton bought ADT Rail Systems, a rail industry condition monitoring specialist.

在截至2004年5月的一年中，ICS在收费上的收入为4600万英镑之前，收入为300万英镑，但在最近收购了另一家挣扎的英国自动化公司Silervertech之后，今年收入将增加50％至100％。，已添加到ICS三局。Silvertech于1980年代初作为安全专家成立，多年来已发展为自动化承包商，主要从事石油和天然气行业，但对药品的兴趣越来越高。

Funds injection

Now, with a capital injection of £5.5 million, it has ambitions to become a true independent Main Automation Contractor (MAC), operating globally and addressing potential customers on equal terms with the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Silvertech management believes there’s a real opportunity for an independent who offers an alterative approach at a time when, despite paying lip service to open systems, mainstream OEMs seem keener than ever to lock in their users.

无论是否购买该论点，押注炼金术在Silvertech上触摸炼金术是不明智的。显然，如果机会出现的话，它对工艺自动化领域的真正理解和专业知识，可能会大大部署。

关于the Author

Andrew Bond,andrew@abpubs.demon.co.uk, is a journalist based in the United Kingdom, and is Editor of the Industrial Automation Insider, a monthly newsletter delivered via e-mail.www.iainsider.co.uk。