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

x86 for professional-grade performance

“For all the people building robots and drones and wanting to do hardware hacking, BeagleBone Black has all that expansion hardware on there,” Kridner adds. “For some of these platforms, if you wanted to do anything real-time, like precision timing for motor control, you would have to go out and buy an Arduino or some other sort of microcontroller system. Here, there are two 32-bit 200 embedded computer that have direct access to the pins. They are real-time and can let Linux do some of the things that it is great at like networking, high-level language support, GUI development, and the big number crunching, and let the embedded computer live on those 200 MHz microcontrollers. You come to it with whatever development baggage you already have; if you want to go into real engineering design and make an end product out of it, there is no barrier to doing that.”

As the industrial market continues filling out with developers of varying skill levels and intentions, the need for different classes of development boards has also emerged. Recently, industrial maker boards have been released, offering increased compute power and high-speed I/O interfaces. Though slightly more expensive than their ARM-based predecessors, they target more serious development and are capable of scaling into traditional embedded applications.

refer to:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/diy-pushes-open-hardware-kindergarten-kickstarter/

IT Technology for industrial applications

With that said, the controls world is going to be moving with anautomation that has a definite consumer bias, with product development and release cycles of six months or less. In an industry where the average life expectancy of an automotive production line is eight years, it is impossible to expect the networking in an industrial setting to keep up with modern IT standards. Therefore, we turn our attention to the technologies that have existed the industrial, with the most open standards and the very best support. These are the protocols we wish to use and keep, and this article highlights and explains some of these technologies. This article does not focus on the technical implementations of each piece of technology. Rather, it is assumed the reader will be using packaged solutions such as a function block for a PLC.

refer to:
http://www.automation.com/leveraging-it-technology-for-industrial-controls-applications

The embedded system integrations

What’s more, the 4th solutions generation Intel Core processors are more energy efficient than their predecessors, enabling smaller form factors for constrained spaces and easier heat dissipation. The high performance and low power also make it possible to consolidate multiple automation workloads (such as supervisory control and image processing) on a single computing device solutions – a topic we will revisit shortly. Intel AVX 2.0 also extends integer vector processing from 128 bits to 256 bits, also doubling throughput for many fanless embedded systems workloads. Along the way we’ll present examples where members of the Intel Intelligent Systems Alliance are taking advantage of the new embedded systems.

refer to:

http://embedded-computing.com/articles/transform-factory-the-intel-core-processor/

WORKS in a power plant summary

Temperature, contaminates and other factors have no impact on the unit's calibration. Once calibrated, the electric control valve actuator can operate for months, even years, without adjustment. Work in harsh environments and get little or no recognition. But their impact on power plant efficiency can be significant. Valves and actuators are critical in almost every aspect of single board computer. They are used in a wide range of applications, including pollution control, feed water, cooling water, chemical treatment, bottom ash and steam turbine control embedded systems. They are exposed to a variety of chemicals, abrasive materials and very high temperatures. They are critical in optimizing efficiency, and they are often the final control element in the operation of a power plant. Electric Actuators and Rotork has a line of all-electric, compact modulating actuators known as the Continuous Duty Modulating Failsafe Electric Actuator. The technology  Rotork CVA is suited for almost all linear, quarter-turn control valve applications requiring precise position control and continuous modulation. "There are applications where they need to move continuously," Said Pete Kundin, general manager of Rotork's Eastern U.S. Business Unit.

refer to: http://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-117/issue-8/features/opportunities-to-improve-efficiency.html