Frost and Sullivan Names SICK 2022 Global Industrial Internet of Things Sensor Company of the Year

SICK Sensor Intelligence has received the 2022 Global Industrial Internet of Things, or IIoT, Sensor Company of the Year Award by Frost & Sullivan. The award is Frost & Sullivan's top honor and recognizes market participants that embody visionary innovation, market-leading performance, and unmatched customer care.

Frost & Sullivan said it uses a rigorous analytic process to evaluation numerous nominees for this award before determining the recipient.

Independent analysts evaluate each company based on criteria from two main areas: visionary innovation, plus performance and customer impact. This includes topics such as addressing unmet needs, leadership focus, best practices, price/performance value, and customer experiences.

“As a global company, it focuses on serving all customers with the same high-quality and comprehensive expertise, regardless of physical location. With this leadership focus, Frost & Sullivan expects SICK to sustain its leadership in the IIoT sensor market,” said Samantha Fisher, best practices research analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

Committed to research and development

For this award, Frost & Sullivan considered SICK’s dedication to creating innovative products through ongoing customer engagement and feedback, in addition to a strong reputation for innovation and problem-solving.

This stems from SICK’s commitment to research and development (R&D). SICK’s deliberate design process incorporates customer feedback and requirements into R&D processes, leveraging a proven environment of the customer methodology to generate new ideas and inventions.

This R&D process involves gathering input directly from customers regarding new solutions and service offerings to ensure that roadmap designs meet relevant customer needs and solve important business challenges.

SICK also routinely monitors market trends and looks for disruptive technologies to incorporate these into existing solutions. This enables it to provide the innovative and forward-thinking technology to solve customers’ problems. Because of this, SICK said it has a portfolio of best-in-class and disruptive technology for the industrial sector. 

Sick’s digital transformation and IIoT approach

Sensors are the backbone of IIoT and digital transformation applications. Intelligent sensors are a necessity to not only to collect data but also to transform it into valuable data points to make informed decisions. Sensors do more than merely just “sense.” They also can “think” to enhance processes throughout the industrial automation space.

SICK’s products and solutions have standard connectivity across platforms via solutions to the cloud and SICK’s Telematic Data Collector (TDC). Some examples include SICK AppSpace, deep learning, quality control, localization and navigation technologies, and a broad diversity of Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) sensors.

“SICK’s brand is synonymous with quality, innovation, and leadership. Starting in 2004, the company rebranded itself as “SICK Sensor Intelligence” to position itself as the data provider for Industry 4.0 and IIoT.

This early movement marks SICK’s long-term focus and track-record compared to other manufacturers; the company’s head start enabled it to evolve alongside the market and grow into a strong leadership position,” said Sebastián Trolli, senior industry analyst of Industrial Technologies at Frost & Sullivan.

Despite the proven benefits of digital transformation and IIoT principles, there is some market resistance to implementation. Most adoption resistance comes from overcoming challenges with implementation related to costs, complexity, and perception.

However, SICK said it continues to take strides to address these challenges with a customer-centric strategy.

A combination of sensor intelligence with industry and application expertise can take SICK’s partnership with customers to the next level and help others rapidly develop sensor-based applications.