Asia claims almost half of Industrial automation system

A recent report by IHS has shown that in 2012, capital expenditure on industrial automation equipment in Asia reached a total of $76.6bn, representing 46% of global investments in the sector.
Despite this established and rising trend, selling industrial automation equipment in Asia remains a clear business opportunity and one where many European providers are lagging behind.
Despite the first half of 2012 seeing an Asian market slowdown, with only a 3.7% growth in overall revenue from industrial automation equipment, the second half of the year showed definite improvement. The positive trend has continued in 2013, with the industrial automation sector set to grow by 6.2%. In such a dynamic market, getting new business can be both a business and technical challenge.
One of the key areas of opportunity is the power industry, where the booming consumer and industrial power markets in developing economies such as China and India have created rocketing demand. In China the per capita energy use is still a long way behind most of Western Europe, meaning the potential for growth is still huge. Without question, Asia represents a perfect storm of opportunities for European automation suppliers.
In order to help businesses better understand how to take advantage of the current climate and increase their industrial automation sales in Asia, particularly China, the CC-Link Partner Association (CLPA) is hosting a seminar entitled ‘Gateway to China’. The event will take place on 24th September at the Mitsubishi Electric Europe Tokyo Conference Suite in Hatfield.


For more information on the speakers and to book tickets for the event, visit the CLPA’s EventBrite page gateway-to-china.eventbrite.co.uk/.

refer to:http://www.connectingindustry.com/automation/asia-claims-almost-half-of-automation-sales.aspx

Industry organization members between professions

When asked if their company outsources professional/engineering services, 58.9% of the respondents said “yes,” while 35.1% of respondents said “no.” Six percent were unsure. An interesting data point is those who said “yes” reported an average salary of $109,740, which was $5,391 higher than those who said “no.”

When asked if their company had undergone a merger or acquisition in the past three years, a shocking 29.7% said “yes,” while 66.1% said “no” and 4.2% were unsure. Another interesting data point is those who said “yes” reported an average salary of $111,673, which was $6,107 higher than those who said “no.”

Once again this year, the results indicate that professionals who are members of industry organizations pulled in higher salaries, on average, than those who are not members. For example, almost half of all respondents (48.3%) are embedded computer members, and their average salary is $111,297. Compare that to respondents who do not belong to any organizations (34.1%), whose average salary is $97,704. It pays to join and get involved with well-known industry organizations.

Getting paid for overtime
There is a message here for employers. If you are paying less than the industry average, you could very likely lose your engineers. Based on data from industrial auto machines, a recruiting and contract staffing company based in Minnesota, there is a high demand for automation professionals, and high-quality candidates are hard to find. When companies do find good candidates, the candidates typically have multiple offers on the table. If your company employs high-quality professionals, pay them well, or you may lose them.

When we asked survey respondents if they were happy working in the automation profession, nearly 80% said “yes.” Only 2.2% said “no,” and 18.0% said “sometimes.” Those who said “yes” are making just slightly higher salaries than the average—$107,772. However, those who said “no” are making significantly less than the average—$90,875. Those who are happy “sometimes” came in just under the average at $104,356.

refer to: http://www.automation.com/factors-that-affect-your-salary-what-you-need-to-know

Power of watchdog timers

Watchdog Timers
SoCs can have timers which will bring a processor or any other controller out of a hung situation by making them transit to a safe state. It can implement a safety feature to execute a task periodically. Timers can specify a period in which a task needs to be executed. If that task does not get executed in the predefined duration, the system is assumed hung. Thus, the SoC can monitor the execution of the task and take appropriate safety measures.


Redundant critical on-chip modules like processor, ISO, DMA controller, internal clock generator, and communications peripherals can improve reliability should a primary hardware module become non-functional while the vehicle is running. Such a system can have in-built error detection mechanisms and on-the-fly switching to redundant hardware to mitigate threats to passenger safety.
But this kind of redundant hardware architecture comes with the penalty of increased area and higher power management in silicon. Area penalties can be minimized by intelligent selection of which functions need to be duplicated in silicon. Power can be minimized by adopting power and clock gating in the redundant modules. Some  in-vehicle computers can be implemented in lock-step of each other, where primary and redundant modules process the same input. Mismatch in the output of the lock-step modules indicates a defect in either of the modules. The system can switch itself off or take appropriate safety measures to avoid any real-time failure. Redundant hardware should be placed quite far in silicon from the primary embedded systems to avoid tampering of both modules together.

refer to: http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4421704/Safety---security-architecture-for-automotive-ICs