Good afternoon. My name is Patrick Goris. I am the Vice President, Investor Relations for Rockwell Automation. For those of you in the room here in Chicago, welcome again. I hope you had a good tour, informative, and I am sure that you were able to say that or to notice that we were very excited to show our new technologies and capabilities and those of our partners. Welcome to those of you who are following us on the webcast, and thank you for taking some time and joining us here for our investor presentation. With that, I will be introducing here Keith Nosbusch, our Chairman and CEO. Thank you.
Thanks, Patrick. Let me also extend my welcome to all of you for joining us today. For those of you who came to Chicago, I hope you have gotten a lot of input and a lot of new information about Rockwell Automation. I hope you felt the same energy that all of us feel when we are on that floor with our customers, with our employees, and with our partners who are absolutely providing the best automation and capabilities in the world. Certainly, we think it was a great opportunity for you to learn about our latest technology, the Connected Enterprise, and how our partners can help them drive more productivity, and quite frankly, be more globally competitive. Just a quick reminder of our safe harbor statement. This presentation includes forward-looking statements that are subject to our disclosed risks and uncertainties.
Today, I will start with an overview of the macro and automation market trends and how the next-generation High-Performance Architecture will capitalize on these trends to help deliver the Connected Enterprise to our customers. I will also cover our market leadership and key growth opportunities. We will have Frank Kulaszewicz, the head of our Architecture & Software segment, and Blake Moret, the head of our Control Products & Solutions segment, come up and discuss how innovation and domain expertise will sustain our market leadership. They will share examples of how we are helping customers achieve their vision of the Connected Enterprise today. After that, Ted will close with a short financial review. Then I will have a couple of wrap-up comments. At that time, we will open it up to Q&A. We expect that the webcast will last till around 3:00 P.M. Central Time.
You can think of this as the elevator speech for Rockwell Automation. It captures the key aspects of the company that are important for our investors to understand. Our sales in 2015 were $6.3 billion. We are primarily an organic growth company. We believe that we have attractive organic growth opportunities that will yield long-term above-market growth and great returns. Through our intellectual capital, both innovation and broad, deep domain expertise, we have been helping customers for over 110 years. We are the largest pure-play global automation and information company, a market leader in a great industry. We provide products, solutions, and services across a wide spectrum of end markets, from automotive to consumer packaged goods, to a broad range of heavy industries. Organic growth and intellectual capital enable us to earn best-in-class operating margins and return on invested capital.
Just as we help our customers drive productivity, we challenge ourselves on activity every year. Our business model is unique. We have market-making channel partners, including the best distributors in the industry. We also have trusted partnerships with industry leaders such as Cisco, Endress+Hauser, and FANUC. Lastly, our culture and business practices are built on a strong foundation of ethics and integrity. In a nutshell, we are an intellectual capital company with differentiation and diversification that enable us to deliver results. Our long-term growth and performance strategy is fundamentally a value creation one. We intend to generate above-market revenue growth by continuing to expand our served market, capturing market share and customer share, and executing a disciplined acquisition strategy that'll serve as a catalyst to faster organic growth. Driving productivity enables us to fund our best growth opportunities.
For us, this spending is primarily a P&L investment rather than capital investment. The result will be an expansion of our intellectual capital that sustains our differentiation and expands the value we provide to our customers. Being an asset-light intellectual capital company enables us to have strong cash flow and deliver exceptional return on invested capital. We have a great track record of returning that cash to shareowners. We're confident that we have this strategy, and it will enable us to deliver sustainable value to our customers. This is something that we've proven, our ability to execute this strategy and deliver superior returns to our shareowners. We've been talking about important macro trends for a couple of years, and four of these are now being characterized as disruptions by McKinsey. Let me walk you through each one and what we expect the impact will be on our customers.
The first is urbanization that will increase primarily related to growing middle-class populations in emerging markets. This will be a tailwind for us, for our customers, and will drive growing demand for consumer goods and increased energy consumption. Our multi-discipline control platform is perfectly suited to consumer goods manufacturing, and our Intelligent Motor Control provides energy efficiency. The second disruption is accelerating technology change. We are seeing an explosion in the number of network connections and the amount of bandwidth that's required as industrial assets become smarter and connected. 1 trillion objects are expected to be connected by 2025. For our customers, the security and reliability of those connections will be paramount and will increase their need for our network infrastructure products and services and the enhanced security features of our portfolio. Let me talk about the aging world and more specifically, the aging workforce.
While this skill gap is a challenge for many of our customers, it will be an opportunity for us to provide our expertise to fill that gap. Lastly, what McKinsey calls greater global flows, we think of this as connecting plants and global supply networks. Our customers are looking for ways to optimize across the enterprise, and we can help them achieve that goal with the Connected Enterprise. These trends reinforce the long-term secular growth opportunities for industrial automation and information. For us to provide value to our customers, it is critical that we understand how automation can help them achieve their business goals. We put these goals into 4 major categories: faster time to market, lower total cost of ownership, improved asset utilization, and enterprise business risk management.
For reducing time to market, we work with our customers in the design phase and the implementation phase of their automation investment, creating flexibility and agility so they can respond to their customers more quickly. We help our customers reduce the total life cycle of their automation investment and the costs associated with that life cycle. It includes the upfront investment, ongoing operating costs, and long-term support of their installed base. In the face of increasing global competition, our customers need to continually find ways to optimize operations and improve asset utilization. Our automation and information products, solutions, and services enable customers to maximize throughput and minimize downtime. Since industrial processes touch many aspects of enterprise risk, we help our customers design, operate, and maintain a safe and secure operating environment, including the intellectual property related to their machine and production processes.
At the end of the day, we protect their reputations as suppliers of quality products and good stewards of the environment. We continually find new and creative ways to expand the value that we can provide our customers. With these business drivers in mind, contemporary technology advancements are now leading customers to seek new ways to achieve the next level of productivity and global competitiveness. The foundation is smart assets, smart industrial assets that are generating and utilizing more data than ever before. That data will be processed, aggregated, and analyzed with scalable computing and delivered at the point of most value, whether that is directly within a controller or the edge or in the cloud. Further, contemporary mobility platforms bring information, visibility, collaboration, and remote expertise where and when it is needed.
Of course, all of this information must flow across secure networks. The inrush of these contemporary technologies is changing the game for our customers. They now want more, more from isolated islands of automation to be integrated, responsive, productive operations. For automating labor to leveraging information from products and pockets of expertise to global collaboration, from open to both open and secure. In short, we're finding that our customers want the Connected Enterprise. Think of the Connected Enterprise as an environment where contemporary technologies blend with traditional control and information technologies found on the plant floor to magnify the power of contextualization data and create a much more capable and interconnected production environment. It involves industrial operations which are integrated, optimized, and collaborative, and secure from the machine level through the enterprise level and across the supply chain, while connecting remote operations, assets, and users.
It's about optimizing the enterprise by bringing people, processes, and technologies together to drive productivity. We deliver the Connected Enterprise through integrated control and information. That allows us to create a smarter, more productive, and more secure environment. We do that through our three core platforms, the Integrated Architecture, Intelligent Motor Control, and our solutions and services organizations, and all the offerings that they bring to the market. Simply said, it's about safe, secure, reliable information, real-time information, delivered in a consistent manner so customers can make better business decisions. Integrating technology advancements into the core of our platforms enables us to build much more powerful solutions that deliver transformational business value to our customers. Frank and Blake will go deeper into how we're helping customers achieve their vision of the Connected Enterprise. Let me switch gears to talk more about market leadership.
I've heard a number of you say that Rockwell Automation is a great franchise, and we couldn't agree with you more. What it is that enables us to remain a market leader, what is it that does that? Let's start with our business model. We go to market as one company globally. That allows us to have coordinated product development roadmaps, one face to the customer, and effective global collaboration. We have a broad set of market access partners, including distributors and system integrators. They're more than just delivery arms. They create end-market demand. Many are exclusive to Rockwell Automation, and we are dedicated to all of them. As I mentioned earlier, we have A-plus strategic partners. We know how to build win-win long-term relationships with them.
Being in business for more than 110 years in a technology-based industry means that we know how to lead and navigate through technology disruptions, from relays to PLCs to multi-discipline control, and now the Connected Enterprise. Our customers look to us to be the visionaries for their automation and information needs. While we're always looking forward, we are committed to protecting our customers' ongoing automation and information investments. We call this future-proofing, which means we have a roadmap, the reference architecture, utilizing the core control platform Logix and network infrastructure, standard unmodified Ethernet, that will allow our customers to build their Connected Enterprise at a pace that is appropriate for their situation, protecting their investment as they evolve their journey to the Connected Enterprise, yet they're able to get business value every step of the way. This is what the benefits of contemporary technology allows them to do.
Lastly, we don't rest on our laurels. We're constantly looking for ways to expand our served market, improve our capabilities, and gain market share. We have the right strategy, and with our focus, our intense focus on execution, we will extend our leadership position. Most of you are very familiar with Rockwell Automation's world-leading Integrated Architecture. Through recent significant investments in innovation, we have evolved our Integrated Architecture and our integrated control and information architecture into a High-Performance Architecture. That's what you were able to see on the floor during your tour. This High-Performance Architecture, based on the ongoing evolution of Logix, is scalable, future-proof, and built upon contemporary technologies with next-generation capabilities enabling the Connected Enterprise. It is incrementally deployable and IT/OT-ready with information management and end-to-end security capabilities.
It is still the only architecture in the market with a complete set of real-time control disciplines that are integrated with real-time information such as diagnostics, prognostics, analytics, and optimization. It is completely built upon one network, standard unmodified Ethernet. There is an important change in the automation market today. Industrial automation customers that are on their journey to the Connected Enterprise need High-Performance Architectures, not just a collection of products. Innovation and contemporary technology and open interfaces to third-party software applications, think of that as apps on a smartphone, are important foundations of our High-Performance Architecture. It is truly next generation, available today, and quite frankly, is only going to get better in the future. This is a prime example of our continued market leadership. There's a lot on this slide, so I'm just going to hit the highlights.
We play in a large market that has grown to $90 billion. The longer-term secular drivers of industrial automation and information demand continue to be intact. Customers need productivity to remain globally competitive. They need to continually update their systems to take advantage of the newest technologies in a secure manner. The growing middle class will fuel consumer demand in emerging markets, and there is a skills gap that will grow through the next decade. We also have opportunities to grow market share and increase our share of customer automation spend. We've demonstrated that well in process and safety, and we're confident we can continue to drive share gain. We will continue to find ways to grow our served market, and we've just listed a few of those areas here.
To sum it up, looking past the near-term challenging market conditions, we have great growth opportunities, and we are well-positioned to continue our track record of above-market growth. I'll be back at the end with a few wrap-up comments, now let me introduce Frank and Blake to carry on with the conversation. Frank, Blake?
Thanks, Keith. Okay. Good morning, or good afternoon, I should say. It's a pleasure to be here again with you this year. I'm Frank Kulaszewicz.
I'm Blake Moret.
We manage the operating segments for Rockwell Automation, we're going to kind of tag team today, the presentation. I'm going to spend some time talking to you about innovation, our technology innovation, and how we bring that to market in our products, our platforms, and our architecture. Blake's going to spend some time talking about domain expertise, mostly in the forms of our solution and services business. Then we're going to change topic a little bit and talk specifically about customer value. What we're going to try to do is relate how that technology innovation and the domain expertise helps our customers solve problems in their business, and we have some case studies we'd like to share with you. When we think about innovation, we really have a history of innovation.
You can see that in the offerings we have today and the things we've done in the past. We are recognized in the market as an innovative company. We're very proud of that, we take that very seriously because we really try to focus our innovations on customer value. I mentioned earlier, we deliver those through our products, our services, and our solutions. We have a great opportunity because of our broad portfolio to not only innovate within our platforms but across our platforms. A number of those things have been important to us for a long time. Jeff Kent this morning mentioned that we've kind of stuck with a number of the key tenets that we have, we've listed some here, scalability, multi-discipline control, Keith mentioned that earlier. Premier Integration or ease of use has been important.
Then allowing our customers to move forward or go backward with our new platforms and attach to their current investments. Those things are important to us because they provide our customers with flexibility, they simplify the deployments and the use of our equipment, they protect their investment life cycle. That came up a number of times this morning on one of the things that we do quite well compared to others in the market. These tenets are taking us forward. If you had a chance to go out on the floor, I think almost everybody here did, you saw the value of our partners. John McDermott talked about how many partner booths were out on the floor.
You can see that we can't be everything to everybody, nor can our partners, the power of us and our partner network really comes to light. Big partners like Cisco and AT&T and Microsoft certainly, also many others who provide complementary products that our customers need to fill out their automation portfolio.
Those partners really allow us to focus on what we do best.
When we talk about innovation and we talk about a history of innovation, we thought it'd be great to depict that in some way. Here you can see that over the course of the last several decades, we continue to innovate. That innovation is also important because it goes through those market discontinuities that we see, and it's allowed us to grow through those discontinuities. We talk about ourself as an intellectual capital company. You can see that the value of that capital continues to increase. Innovation is what's driving our vision of the Connected Enterprise. It's an enabler. Innovations from the recent past, like multi-discipline control, Keith mentioned that's still not something our competitors have in the marketplace. Current innovations like secure industrial Ethernet, very important for us. Information solutions. Most recently, mobility.
You probably noticed the amount of mobility out on the floor, a current innovation in the industrial world. Finally, we look forward to innovations in the future, things like information management, analytics, and other capabilities that'll continue to drive more value to our customers and will continue the evolution of the Connected Enterprise into the future. The Connected Enterprise is not a one-step thing. It's a journey. We believe our opportunity is to innovate as customers take that journey. There's an opportunity to bring innovation to market. We do that in a lot of different ways, but the primary ways are through our products, our platforms, and our High-Performance Architecture. There's a lot of new products coming out. I think we talked earlier today about 55 new platforms are being influenced and literally hundreds of products that are derived from that.
Those are valuable to our customers, but they also create a foundation, and they're the foundation of our future-proof, next-generation architecture. While we might talk about the individual capabilities and features, it's really the value of the architecture that's come to market. That's going to change what we offer in the market. It's going to change how our platforms evolve. They'll become smarter, more productive, and more secure, and they're going to provide, hopefully, more value to our customers across their automation lifecycle. We think of that as customers who design, operate, and maintain their systems. You also saw a lot of that this morning in the discussion we had from Procter & Gamble. That offering will evolve. Our software systems will focus on productivity. They'll focus on engineering reuse.
We'll provide engineering content for our customers so they can build their machines and their systems faster. Our systems will evolve. We'll build system intelligence in. A number of those showed up today, things like batch and hybrid right into our control system, model predictive control for advanced capabilities, and other things that just simplify the life of an OEM, like automatic tuning and commissioning. Those platforms, as they become smarter, more productive, and more secure, a key element to that is connectivity. Everything is going to be connected. You saw many, many examples of that today. You can't help but seeing that standard unmodified Ethernet any place you walk out on the floor. That connectivity is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to drive more value, but it's also a responsibility, so security becomes even more important.
Secure industrial Ethernet is really a priority for us in our products and platforms as we offer things like network switch technologies, as well as in capabilities we build into that architecture. This year, we have a big focus on authentication and policy management, so how we ensure connectivity is secure in our architecture, then how we protect a customer's intellectual property, how we detect tamper detection so our customers know that their systems are secure. Security is also a journey. That'll evolve as we add more capabilities and as that threat landscape evolves. Security has become one of those key tenets of our secure industrial infrastructure.
I want to emphasize one point as well, and that's the strength of being a single integrated business. We have products that come from both segments, but all of those products are completely aligned with the High-Performance Architecture that we're talking about. They all use the same communication services. They're all intended to provide value in a system across the business, across both segments.
That's caused our processes within the company to evolve. Designing for security has become important, not just for the clear security products, but the entire architecture.
Great. Thank you. To complement those innovative products is domain expertise across a very broad range of vertical industries. Very few competitors can match our reach into the portfolio of discrete and process applications that we have. We have a thriving, profitable solutions business that delivers complete solutions in our targeted applications, and we have a well-defined systems integrator program that extends that expertise and geographic reach. That's really important because particularly in process applications, customers absolutely need to be given the confidence that we understand their applications and are worthy of their trust. We also take a lifecycle approach to our value add. We provide consulting services to help customers better define their problems, the engineering and design services, the lifecycle support programs, up to and including the migration of those legacy systems to new products.
In addition to all the new products that you saw on the show floor today, we've also extended our ability to serve our market with new application expertise as well as services to be able to leverage our technology to be able to provide support over the lifecycle of those projects. We talk a lot about PlantPAx, and we're winning an increasing number of projects that integrate that modern DCS system with our Intelligent Motor Control to show customers a new way of doing things. Again, that narrows the field of competitors who even have the portfolio who can compete with us there. We have serialization and traceability solutions that are helping food and beverage and pharmaceutical customers address increasingly stringent demands for traceability. We're re-entering the powertrain market in time for automakers to meet the more stringent CAFE fuel efficiency standards.
On the services side, we've grown or acquired services in areas that leverage our own technology. One of the most exciting is in the network services, including security area. As customers begin their journey to the Connected Enterprise, having a sound backbone, well-designed, and future-proof is really important, but rarely can they do that themselves. That's a fast-growing part of our services.
Than the exactly same amount by negative currency translation impact. Clearly, we have had a big headwind from currency over this period, and particularly in the last couple of years. If you look at the bottom left, adjusted EPS, you can see here the quick recovery that we saw after the 2009 recession in EPS levels, and we've continued to increase our adjusted EPS even in years when our sales decreased due to currency. On the bottom right, you'll see free cash flow. I guess what I would like to point out here is that our cash flow has been much more stable through the cycle than either sales or earnings, I think the strong free cash flow conversion is a very good indication of the high quality of our earnings.
Finally, on the top right, return on invested capital, I think it would be fair to say that our ROIC is best in class and an indication of a few things about the company. First, we have very strong operating margins, so we have a strong numerator for that calculation. We also have more of an asset-light model, and we're not very capital-intensive as it relates to growth. We're primarily an organic sales company, and I think all three of those contribute to those very high ROIC levels. At 33% in fiscal 2015, ROIC was a record for the company. Finally, on cash deployment priorities. Our cash deployment priorities remain unchanged. We're going to continue to fund acquisitions that we believe can be a catalyst for higher rates of organic growth. We will also continue to return cash to shareowners through dividends and share repurchases.
We announced last week a 12% increase in our dividend. This is the seventh consecutive double-digit percentage dividend increase since the beginning of 2010, and it's an indication of our confidence in sustainable cash generation. We significantly increased our share repurchases during fiscal 2015, and that was a consequence of our strong free cash flow. Overall, in 2015, we returned $950 million to shareowners, and that was a 19% increase compared to fiscal 2014. I think we've consistently demonstrated our commitment to shareowners, returning over $3.5 billion of cash over the past five years. For fiscal 2016, we expect to spend approximately $500 million on share repurchase. With that, I will turn it back over to Keith.
Okay. As we talked about on the earnings call, and Ted just reminded us, we are currently operating in a very challenging environment, but we've seen this before and have proven that we can navigate successfully through slow periods and come out stronger on the other end. We're pretty clear about what we need to focus on in the near term. The first thing is growth, and there are still opportunities there. We have a robust set of new products, services, and capabilities, including our next-generation High-Performance Architecture. From an industry perspective, we expect auto and consumer to be the strongest this year, and productivity projects to continue in heavy industries. Cost management is always important and even more so in a low-growth environment. While we've taken restructuring actions and will drive cost We do need to sustain critical R&D and customer-facing investments.
They are the foundation of our intellectual capital business model. Ted mentioned our effective cash deployment priorities will continue in fiscal 2016. At the end of the day, even in a slow market environment, we will balance delivering short-term financial performance with investing in the business for the long term. It is important that you understand how we measure ourselves. It will help you understand how we run the business. As most of you know, our annual incentive compensation is based on four key metrics, sales and EPS growth, free cash flow, and ROIC. We believe these are all critical to driving long-term shareowner value. There are a few other areas that we feel are very important in the health of the business. Share gain through a cycle is arguably the best measure.
We don't have the best data globally, but we do use the best resources available, and that data shows consistent share gain in controllers, Intelligent Motor Control, safety, process, and services since 2008. We've challenged ourselves to deliver cost productivity every year. 2015 was an outstanding year for productivity, and we expect another strong year in fiscal 2016. Every year, we conduct a comprehensive survey of our customers that results in a loyalty score. We've seen steady improvement in the score and continually challenge ourselves to do better. It is important that we develop metrics to track our progress here. Two of the more important ones are growth in our network infrastructure portfolio, both products and services, and Logix growth.
Both areas outperformed the company in 2016 or 2015, I should say, and we expect that to happen in 2016 as well. It is important that we hold ourselves accountable for these outcomes. We continue to believe, not surprisingly, that Rockwell is a great investment. We operate in an attractive market, and we are solely focused on that market. It is all we do every day. Our pipeline of growth opportunities is robust and will help us sustain our market leadership and grow share. Our experienced leadership team, many of whom you've met today, is adept at managing in all market conditions, and our strategy as an intellectual capital business built on differentiation enables us to generate high returns and strong cash flows. Our innovation engine is really humming, and we are all laser-focused on execution.
Our track record of returning cash to shareowners, strong balance sheet, and culture of ethics and integrity should help all of you sleep at night. This is a great slide to end on. From the end of 2008 to the end of 2015, with respect to total shareholder return, we've clearly outperformed the S&P and delivered an annualized return over that period of over 18%, albeit from a low starting point in 2008. We believe that our above-market sales growth, earnings leverage, superior return on invested capital, and a disciplined approach to cash deployment have all been important factors in that outperformance, and we are committed to making sure that that continues. We have never been better positioned, and we will have a great future. With that, I'll turn it back over to Frank.
I'm sorry, Frank, to Patrick, and we'll have the other gentleman come up, and we'll start the Q&A. Patrick?
About a foot shorter than Frank.
Yeah.
Okay, with that, a couple of people around here with microphones. If you raise your hand and wait till the microphone is there for the people on the webcast, also please limit your question to one question and a follow-up. Thank you.
Okay, who's got the microphone?
Thank you. Looks like I have it here.
Okay, Jeff.
Two questions. On the long-term performance, I did note in the recent 10-K that you moved from kind of the 6%-8% top-line growth and double-digit EPS to just kind of an outgrowth type of format and structure. Sounds like a pragmatic thing to do perhaps with currency and everything, but is there something embedded in that in your view of how the market grows the next 5 or 10 years that's different than what you thought before?
No, Jeff. We still have the same long-term goals, we felt with last year and this year for us to comment at that same rate was inappropriate, quite frankly. We believe in this period that the most important thing is that we're outgrowing the market, but our long-term goals have not changed, and that was simply to reflect the current environment. We've always talked about that being a growth rate over a cycle, it's slowing now, we didn't want to, quite candidly, mislead at this point. Our long term, no change.
Right. Really just more of maybe a housekeeping question, given the way all the verticals have moved around, could you size us now maybe in those five big sleeves you put on slide 19, I think it was kind of what the end market percentages are as we ended 2015?
Sure. Well, from a single market, we lump consumer packaged goods in one. That would be consumer packaged goods, life sciences, and home and personal care. That's between 30%-35% of our sales. The heavy industries would be a little over 50%, the largest being oil and gas, around 12%. Then we have mining, which would be mid-single digits. Then we have pulp and paper, metals, and water and wastewater. Really, all of those are basically under 5%. Then transportation, which would be automotive and tire, that would be roughly 12%-15%. I think that pretty well covers the major categories that we had up there.
Thank you. Obviously, a lot of talk today about the Connected Enterprise and Rockwell as the prototype Connected Enterprise. Maybe just talk about how it's changed the way that you operate the company in terms of maybe even trying to quantify the performance improvement you've had as you've gone through this process in terms of margin, but perhaps more importantly, in terms of flexibility of cost base and the way you're able to rebalance your manufacturing. Especially now that we're starting to negative on volumes, how do you expect your flexibility of your cost base to compare to maybe prior down cycles?
I'll make a couple of comments, then Ted may want to add as well. When we're done, you can also grab Marty Thomas, and he'll fill you in. This has been a great journey for us as well. We're not just talking about this for our customers. This is something that we take very seriously inside our own business. It started when we put in the new business system. What we've been talking about is basically driving 4%-5% cost productivity year after year throughout the organization. The standardization that we've done in our business processes, the ability now to basically, we have re-footprinted our manufacturing structure over the last 5-7 years. It's much more global, so we're able to compete in each region appropriately, particularly with our customer-facing resources, whether it be our services people or our engineering domain expertise.
As Blake mentioned, we certainly have taken advantage of regional and global design centers, engineering centers for some of our solutions portfolio capabilities. We've dramatically expanded our presence in Asia to be able to, what we would call, have the Asian mindset and mentality from a core design standpoint. The two things we've been able to do is, one, lower our engineering cost per hour to be more competitive in our solutions business. Ted talked about the fact that we have a very profitable solutions business today. Part of that has been by reducing our cost structure as we globalize that business.
We are able now to have worldwide visibility to our supply chain, we're able to make real-time changes based upon either events, whether they be events in our production areas or quite frankly, environmental impact to our supply chain based upon other disasters that are not under our control. It has really changed our approach to how we drive the business, where, as I said, we have process standardization, we're talking about now the monthly operations meetings are about sharing best practices and driving the implementation and execution. The next phase of this is we're going to put analytics on our manufacturing lines, on our equipment, and be able to demonstrate to our customers exactly what we're talking to them about. In fact, what you heard Jeff talk about this morning as to where they're taking their business.
We have a much more integrated supply chain. We have 3 types of manufacturing, build to order. We have, I'm sorry, build to stock. We have configure to order and build to order, all of those have different dynamics in the manufacturing process, and we're able to optimize each one of those. We've taken days out of our inventory. We've reduced our inventory by over 50% on a days basis. We've taken 50% out of our PPM for quality. We've improved our customer delivery by about 16 points over that period. Really, it's driven a lot of the performance.
Ted mentioned that Today, we roughly have the same, earn 2016, we'll have the same sales in 2011, we have dramatically improved our margins and our cash flow during I would say the Connected Enterprise had a very large portion of that from an operating standpoint, and the single business entity that Blake talked about with respect to how we approach the customer, how we use the same security, the same dimensions of usability, the same network tools. All of this is in our design of our products, that has dramatically saved us money, which enables us to have a much richer, stronger innovation engine. Quite frankly, on the floor, you're seeing the first outputs of some of that.
We have a lot more to go, you're starting to see how we're able to drive our internal productivity, just like we talk about with our customers. We've done it across all areas, including the functions, whether it be legal, whether it be Ted's finance organization, Susan's HR organization. All of our functions have to drive productivity, we do that based upon our internal processes and business systems.
Thanks for the short answer. Just a quick follow-on. You guided for mid-single-digit declines in the current quarter. I don't think your guidance bakes in December shutdowns, unusual shutdowns in December. I don't think you're baking in channel corrections through the distribution. Are there any signs of any of those two things happening that could maybe make this quarter a bit worse?
Yes. Nigel, kind of based on one of your comments, we recently surveyed our U.S. field sales organization just to see if they were hearing anything about unusual shutdowns at the end of this year, and basically, the answer was no. There's always some company that's going through something that causes a shutdown at the end of the year, but nothing unusual in that regard.
Hey, Keith and Ted. It's Steve. Hi. I know you can't see out here.
Yeah.
Listen, last year and the year before, you talked about around $65 billion of the global installed base of legacy automation systems reaching the end of their useful life. You talked about $13 billion. That number actually more than 25 years old, so now I guess it's 26, 27. I think the assertion was that over the next few years, you'd see many of these companies that would no longer be able to keep pushing off their upgrade investments, and we'd see at least some parts of a wave of global upgrade cycles in cognizant with better payback, better efficiency, all the things that we saw today on the floor. Obviously, there's macro issues here, and investors and I are having this argument about secular versus cyclical impact. What are you seeing when you think about those metrics, and are customers able to defer this again?
Are you just seeing continued deferral, where you thought maybe that that wasn't as possible before, and now you're saying, "Well, maybe they have the ability to defer this even further than we thought"?
I think deferral is always an option, quite frankly. We've talked this past year about some improvement in the pulp and paper industry, particularly in North America. That is an example of ultimately you get to a point where you need to modernize. We're seeing modernization investments in that industry, simply because they truly are at the extended end of the equipment. That, we think will continue. The last year or so, we've been talking about mining, where they're going to switch to the OpEx. A big portion of that OpEx is the upgrade of the existing equipment. We'll see that happen in the mining industry.
I think it's too early to say that's what we're going to see in the oil and gas industry, although it won't be for modernization as much as they have to drive efficiency now, and they have to drive productivity. We're starting to see where with the price of oil now being expected to stay low for a longer extended period of time, they have to compete on $45, $50 a barrel oil. That's very different than $100 and $115. We think as the year progresses and as we get into next year, we'll see the productivity drive in the oil and gas industry as well. I think each one of the heavy industries are on somewhat of a different cycle, depending upon where they are in the natural evolution of their business cycle. The one I didn't mention was metals.
There's a tremendous overcapacity in metals worldwide. We see isolated geographies that are also isolated locations, that are also looking at the need to modernize to stay competitive, even in that industry. There's not a lot, but it does offer opportunities to upgrade that installed base. It's mixed, but we do see the need for ongoing modernization and upgrades.
I think also, specific to the U.S. market, until recently, we had three very strong years in the U.S. If you set aside oil and gas and maybe set aside automotive, I believe what was driving that strength in the U.S. was largely about upgrade of the installed base. In those other industries, clearly, there wasn't a lot of new capacity going in. I think we were seeing that. Hopefully, what we're seeing right now will be a short-term pause, and we'll get back on that track in the U.S.
I believe that is what drove the last three years.
All right, thanks. As a follow-up, a little more detailed debate that we got sparked by what we saw on the floor in the show, and that's offering commercial off-the-shelf versus ASIC controllers to your customers to meet their needs and the potential impact on pricing and the pricing business model. Talking about this with some investors, what do you guys see as kind of any risk to that over time as that evolution takes place and customers maybe take advantage of that?
Well, let me start and then Frank, the expert here, can add to it. We don't see any risk because we're doing it, quite frankly. We have historically had ASIC designs, we are in the process of putting together part of the Logix platform, what we would call a COTS-based controller. Because there is a role as we move more into the information management space, where it has a very appropriate role, including some of the analytics and model predictive control capabilities, where they're much more information intensive than they are control intensive. We will, in certain applications, have mixed systems and mixed solutions. Once again, it's about multidiscipline control using the same software development and networks. It's got to be robust because it still has to live in the factory floor.
We think we'll continue to drive differentiation, but it'll be a part of a broader portfolio. Let me stop there and see what Frank wants to add.
Maybe, Keith, in addition to that, I'll provide some context and a few other forward-looking comments. The context I'd offer is we use COTS technology, commercial off-the-shelf processors, in our panels today, in our communication cards today, in our drive products today, and in a number of other areas. We're not unfamiliar with that. The second comment I have is we'll continue to offer custom silicon in our processing family as we have in the past, and that affords us opportunities for capabilities, for performance, for security, and other features. That'll continue. The third comment I'll make is we're doing something unique with that silicon in that we're using that common Logix architecture that we've been so successful with and bringing that forward onto those platforms.
We made some investments a number of years ago, seeing that future coming towards us and the ability to innovate. That was by plan and desire, and it's not a short-term decision. Finally, I would offer that we're learning how to apply innovation in that platform. Certainly, at the top end of our OEM performance business, that'll also offer other opportunities for them for integration of robotics, high-speed condition monitoring, advanced quality, and other capabilities.
Keith, over here. Question on acquisitions. Sensors, there's more sensors going into the controllers and the systems. Is there any interest in getting vertically integrated there or more vertically integrated, either organically or inorganically? Second, could you just remind us priority for M&A as you look at cash deployment? Because M&A has been somewhat quiet over the last couple of years.
Okay. A couple of things with respect to sensors. We have a very good sensor business today. We've done a lot of that, quite frankly, through acquisitions. We see acquisitions as a way to continue to expand our sensor portfolio, and it's an area that we continue to look at, particularly as we mentioned earlier, intelligent assets are at the core of the Connected Enterprise. Sensor inputs will become more critical as time goes on. That would be one of the areas, and we would look to expand into different geographies as part of that as well. As far as acquisitions in general, Ted's chart, I think appropriately identified. We see that as the second use of our cash. We are, as we said, very much an organic growth company, which is expense dollars, P&L dollars.
Cash deployment is a different situation where we can use that to make acquisitions. We've identified acquisitions as a way to expand our product available market. We have built a safety business pretty much strictly through acquisitions. The reason we've been quiet, although we've made a couple, is because we haven't found ones. We don't believe we need to make acquisitions to execute the strategy. As Ted mentioned, we talk about acquisitions as a way to accelerate and catalyze organic growth. We want to make sure that they fit and that we're being financially prudent in our approach to it. We see acquisitions as a great opportunity to augment our organic growth, and we constantly are looking for them and screening them. Hopefully, if we're going to see a slowdown, there may be better opportunities than existed the last couple of years.
A lot of discussion around oil and gas and other industries, I guess maybe the elephant in the room and perhaps the linchpin of the entire industrial economy is automotive. You guys have a great visibility in all the projects that are going on. I think a couple years ago, you referred to it as kind of a mini bubble of CapEx. It's gone up a lot since the downturn. 2016 looks like it's pretty stable, but how does the project pipeline look as we head into 2017? When do you think that cycle is really at the ninth inning? Maybe a question for Ted. I know you guys don't give this information out readily, but you guys talk a lot about the Connected Enterprise and software.
Could you maybe just give us an update on how big the revenue base is as a percentage of your portfolio, and then break that down between the MES, the HMI, and the embedded software, just so we get a good idea since you guys are talking about this a lot.
Let me do the automotive first. We see this next year that automotive will be one of the growth markets for us. We probably are more bullish longer term on it at this point because of our ability to address powertrain. As we continue to evolve the FANUC relationship, if that becomes everything we expect it to be, we think that we can see a deeper pipeline, a fuller pipeline of projects into the 2017 and 2018 timeframe, because the only way these standards are going to be met, the new fuel standards are going to be met is by more engines, different engines, I should say, and different transmissions. That's the heart and soul of powertrain. We've seen the front log there increase. If we can improve on a win rate there, we expect to see automotive as a good opportunity into the future.
That's the way we're planning it. We're working very aggressively in each region to be able to win these projects. We're working very closely with the OEMs as well. It's part of the benefits of the relationship with FANUC.
Do you think if the automotive CapEx is down 10% in any given year, that you can blow through that and still hold your revenues flat in that sector?
Blow through it is a strong statement. Everybody probably has a different idea of what that means. I think if we are able to execute in the powertrain, I think a small decline will not hurt us because we view that as an expansion of our available market. We should be able to do well. I think it's not so much the CapEx as it will be. I think the CapEx will be driven by how the auto sales are going, therefore, their ability to reinvest in new models. That's been our story forever. It's about the new platforms and at what rate are those going to be generated.
On software, I don't think we've ever provided an exact number for software, I would say it is, if you talk about the three basic software-only businesses we have, it would include our programming software, our visualization software, and then the MES that you referred to. All of those together are less than 10% of our total revenue. That piece of our business over time has been growing faster than the company average, particularly the MES piece of that. The other important thing I would say is, I think measuring our success in software strictly on the basis of how fast that part of our business grows is probably not the right way to think about it.
We've become a software business, the vast majority of our product development, particularly in the architecture and software space, is basically software development, but it's software that's embedded in our products. I think just looking at that pure software revenue is not necessarily the best way to measure the contribution of software to our business.
I'd just make two additional comments to that. That embedded software is also throughout our entire Intelligent Motor Control portfolio.
Right.
It's a large part. The second thing I would mention is we do expect to see growth in our visualization platform. I hope you were able to see some of the new platforms out there, the ProcessVue. We believe that our attachment rate will grow in that because of the tight integration between ProcessVue and the Logix family. That is an area that we have high expectations for as part of our software business.
Okay, with that, we're a little bit after 3:00, so we're going to end it here. Thank you again very much for those of you who came here to Chicago, and thank you for those who joined via the webcast. We'll close out the webcast right now and say farewells home here. Good job.