Currently on a visit to Gujarat to present its complete automation strategy for industries in the state, senior executives of the MNC who spoke to The Financial Express said their company provided "the tools to make e-business happen." Currently, Rockwell software is in the process of forming a joint venture with "a Delhi-based company with a California presence" for manufacturing software.

"We will be utilising development talent available in India for the project since the development talent available here is hard to find elsewhere," said Pradeep S David, software regional manager (Asia Pacific) of Rockwell Software, a subsidiary of Rockwell Automation. He added that to begin with, the project size would be below $5 million.

Said David: "Our digital nervous system functions much the same way as the human nervous system and adds value to e-commerce by extracting information from the manufacturing system to the order book level. Thus when you place an order on the Net, you will be taken through the tracking of the production system as well." Rockwell Automation already controls almost 60 per cent of the PLC (Programmable Logic Control) market in the US and about 30 per cent of the PLC market in India.

Its clients range from public-sector IPCL, SAIL and ONGC to corporates like Reliance, Videocon, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Telco, Hyundai, HLL and Nestle.Anand-based NDDB has utilised Rockwell's automation at pasteurisation centres in Bangalore, West Bengal and Gujarat while the Delhi-based Mother Dairy's refrigeration plant too has been automated by the MNC. Similarly, Hyundai's paint booths in Chennai, Videocon's colour picture tubes facility, Telco's mammoth car manufacturing plant have been automated by Rockwell. In all, the company has $25 million worth of business in India.