Automation market survey!

Possibly one of the hardest sectors in which to get a complete picture is Automation in any country. The reason is the complexity of the industries and processes which include automation as an important part. Indeed some surveys we have seen seem not evan to have a basic understanding of the discipline.

Here in Ireland the baton has been taken up by Simotech a company which does have the requisite extensive experience in all aspects of Automation and Manufacturing Instrument Systems.  It is a comprehensive and well designed questionnaire specifically aimed at automation professionals, either European Union passport holders or those who are licensed to work within the EU. Pat Desmond, the MD at Simotech, who has himself many years experience at the coal face of automation in Europe and elsewhere, explains, “The last decade has seen major changes in the Automation industry with significant peaks and slumps in the market. General indications are that the industry is experiencing growth again over the past 18 months.”

The why!

The survey objective is to benchmark the state of the Automation industry in Ireland. It plans to be the most comprehensive insight into the views of employers, employees and suppliers. It is hoped to help all in the automation community of practice, employers, employees, and contractors, to understand the current automation marketplace for engineers. It will help to understand career expectations, salary expectations, locations, technical capabilities, and the career paths into automation and migration into more senior positions.

• Engineers: It will help them gauge where they are with their career expectations, salary benchmarking against their peers, business growth forecasts, the most popular locations for engineers and much more.

• Employers: It will help them understand what motivates the automation engineering community, remuneration benchmarks, how to attract the best engineers into the best positions. It will also assess the sentiment for growth across various industry sectors, etc.

The survey should take no more than six minutes and is simple to complete with no open ended written responses required. Obviously the success of this survey will be dependent on getting a wide spectrum of engineers and employers across all industry sectors, so participants are encourged to share thesurvey link with their colleagues and employees. “Your privacy is important to us. We guarantee that no personal or systems information will be recorded as part of this survey,” says Pat Desmond.

Reward

As a Token of our appreciation participants have the option to enter into a draw for an Apple iPad mini on completion of the survey. To enter the draw, simply forward the entry form at the end of the survey and we will send you on the complimentary report when published and enter you into thedraw. We respect corporate giving policies so we will also make a donation to Unicef in lieu of those who do not wish to enter the draw.

User conference to tour world

Focus on achieving Operational Excellence using an open enterprise control system

Invensys Operations Management will host a series of international events focused on enabling Operational Excellence with innovative technologies and strategies.

OpsManage’10 kicks off in North America at the Peabody Orlando hotel in Orlando, Fla., October 18 to 22. Additional OpsManage’10 conferences will be held November 8 to 10 in Sydney, Australia; November 17 in Tokyo, Japan; November 24 in  Seoul, Korea; December 2 in Taipei, Taiwan; November 16 and 17 in Paris, France; and December 1 and 2 in São Paulo, Brazil.

The event series will be a multi-discipline educational experience that will give attendees an in-depth look at how the company’s InFusion Enterprise Control System (ECS) enables new opportunities for Invensys clients and partners to deliver Operational Excellence across four key areas: Control, Asset, Productivity and Environment & Safety. The latest open technologies and collaborative business models will be explored, along with the role of Invensys’ industry-leading Avantis, Eurotherm, Foxboro, IMServ, SimSci-Esscor, Skelta, Triconex and Wonderware brands, all components of the InFusion ECS, the world’s first enterprise control system.

“Last year’s OpsManage event series garnered a 98 percent approval rating from attendees, and we have put together an even more comprehensive and valuable program this year,” said Mark Davidson, vice president, global promotional marketing and communications, Invensys Operations Management. “We are offering 12 different vertical industry strategy and solutions tracks, along with product brand and user-group tracks, hands-on experiences and training that cover virtually all aspects of enterprise control, from industry and business strategy to instrumentation to connecting with ERP systems. We anticipate that more than 3,000 clients and partners from around the world will be collaborating at the OpsManage’10 event series. While there, they will be able to explore how to overcome traditional barriers to achieving real-time visibility, enterprise-wide profitability and Operational Excellence.”

This year, the OpsManage’10 Expo area will host a wide variety of Invensys ecosystem partners who will present methodologies and solutions expertise for achieving Control, Asset, Productivity and Environment & Safety Excellence. Industry-specific presentations will showcase manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, products and software experiences, and attendees will be able to participate in hands-on demonstrations of Invensys Operations Management and partner solutions. Additional detailed product and application training opportunities are also offered as part of the conference agenda. As global sponsors, Microsoft and Cognizant will be on hand to discuss the results of co-innovation between Invensys, other Invensys partners and Invensys customers using their latest technology and services capabilities.

“The success of our co-innovation with Invensys demonstrates the power of Microsoft’s partner-led approach in addressing the mission-critical needs of our customers,” said Chris Colyer, senior director, Worldwide Alliances, Microsoft. “Microsoft and its partners deliver the strongest heterogeneous platform to provide end-to-end solutions for collaboration, analytics and integration.”

The events will include educational sessions covering asset management and effectiveness, mobile solutions, safety practices, manufacturing intelligence, process automation and energy management. Forums focused on specific vertical industries, including food and beverage; mining, metals, and minerals; facilities management; power; water/wastewater; upstream oil and gas; hydrocarbon processing; pharmaceuticals; and chemicals, will also be featured.

Keynote speakers in Orlando will include Chris Trimble, business innovation expert and author of Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators from Idea to Execution, and Sudipta Bhattacharya, chief executive officer and president of Invensys Operations Management.

Power, Energy and er Automation? #APW10

Last week the ABB Users’ Conference, Automation & Power World, descended on the oil city of Houston with something over 4000 participants.

APW10 Blogspot

YouTube Presentations

on Facebook

LinkedIn

on Twitter #APW10

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ARC’s Forum at APW10
IBM Workshop Sessions at APW10

ControlGlobal Reports
Day 1|\|Day 2|/|Day 3

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Large Crowds Pack ABB User Conference (Automation World)
ABB Highlights Automation and Power Integration (Design News)
The power of integration exemplified at ABB Automation & Power World 2010 (InTech/Automation Weekly)

As we learn of other reports and comments we will add them!

Read-out’s resources have never been sufficient to attend many of the user-group meetings of the various “big boy” automation companies but of late we have been able to get a flavour of them vicariously through the tweets and other online sharings of the attendees with active thumbs and a friendly mobile phone or Blackberry. The ABB event was no exception. As the different talks and presentations occured so tweets were being sent on twitter using the hashtag #APW10 so although people who were not among the throngs present they could eavesdrop while at their desks or on their mobile devices!

“Automation & Power World,” according to ABB, “was designed with a specific focus – to provide engineers and business leaders with a single event where they can experience and learn the latest in Automation and Power technology, and more importantly how it can benefit their business’ profitability.”

Malcolm Shearmur of ABB in Zurich (CH), reported from this ABB’s largest customer event for ABB in a special blog, (though his views, as he points out, are his own rather than those of ABB!). The exhibit area was some 9000 squre metres and opened on the 17th May. Some idea of the exhibits and the venue may be gained from the limited number of pictures on their picasa album and also from presentations which may be found of YouTube (See box on right for links to these and other reports!)

ControlGlobal’s Walt Boyes was among those tweeting and his publisher also provided a daily update of the talks and presentations suplemented by additional “in-depth” clarifications from Walt’s own “Sound Off” blog. For instance his “Peter Terwiesch Explains It All to Us!” and “Who Says the single loop controller is dead?” (Incidentally, and compl;etely of the point, Walt, always looking for information, recounts an encounter while he  was waiting for his plane at Houston airport with a guy who’s product sounds like the answer to a maiden’s prayer post the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – take a look!)

The event kicked off with a wide-ranging address from ABB Group CEO Joe Hogan. He seems to have covered virtually everything from the Greek failure inside the Euro-zone, to the future for e-mobility; the fact that ABB robots polish the back of iPads and Carbon Dioxide emission (“60% of CO2 reduction solution will come from energy efficiency!”). He said “Smart Grids are where Power and Automation will merge!”

“Much of Hogan’s talk, as well as many sessions and exhibits in the 100,000 square foot exhibition hall, focused on power and energy efficiency. The theme begun last year at the merged “Power World” and “Automation World” conferences continued this year–the confluence of power and process automation.” reports Automation World’s Gary Mintchel in his Feed Forward blog. He goes on, “This fact was backed up by Chief Technology Officer Peter Terwisch’s presentation at the press briefing where he threw in one process automation comment at the end of an otherwise power and energy focused talk.”

So what new products impressed from afar? The new ABB Fieldkey device is a loop powered small footprint WirelessHART adaptor. Also a new generation of Swirlmeters. And Gary mentions an as yet un-launched producy “cpmPlus History – a new historian that not only is capable of acquiring tremendous quantities of data, but also has built-in tools for analysis and scripting capability for development custom analysis built on more complex math and algorithms if required by the customer application.”

Also highlighted was ABB’s recent acquisition of Ventyx an Atlanta (GA US) based software provider to global energy, utility, communications etc enterprises. They increase ABB’s offering with a broad range of solutions including: asset management, mobile workforce management, energy trading and risk management, energy operations and energy analytics. The company also provides software solutions for planning and forecasting electricity needs, including renewables.

All in all it appears to have been an interesting event, well attended and hopefully indicating the start of a slow climb into optimism!

It is hoped that  Automation & Power World will return to Orlando (FL US) April 19-21, 2011 where the 2009 event was held!

Automation & Power World Brazil – 17/19 Aug 2010

Automation in East Europe

Eastern European Automation & Control

Market Grows Adhering to EU Standards

European Union 2009

Eastern Europe offers significant new growth opportunities for the automation and control solutions (ACSs) market as industrial activity in Western Europe has reached maturity. European Union accession has generated investments in the new Eastern European member states, since the end users are obliged to accomplish new European standards.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Automation and Control Solutions Market in Eastern Europe, finds that the market earned revenues of $597.8 million in 2008, and estimates this to reach $844.9 million in 2015. The end-user segments covered in this research service are power, chemicals, oil and gas, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, pulp and paper, water and wastewater and others such as metals and mining, cement, glass and textiles.

“The foremost priority of end users has been to invest in the development of their existing automation and control solutions,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Katarzyna Owczarczyk. “This is to fulfil the new European standards imposed on the region since accession to the EU.”

Several end-user companies need to adhere to regulations set by organisations such as the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals (REACH), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ACS manufacturers are making considerable effort to adhere to these regulations and serve their respective end-user industries. European Union and other individual bodies are initiating regional projects in various sectors to help participants specify and design the right structure of production under the laws and limitations imposed.

The most significant challenge in the Eastern European ACSs market is the need to provide solutions with greater compatibility. In the former communist countries in this region, almost all the privatised old factories have outdated technology that needs to be modernised. “The primary demand of Eastern European end users is to refurbish existing ACS with the latest technology,” explains Owczarczyk. “Compatibility concerns have been the main reason for delayed adoption of automation.”

Accordingly, manufacturers must provide automation systems that are compatible with the existing plant installations. This would instil confidence among the end users, and urge them to invest in automation.

Designing compatible automation solutions is lucrative for end users as it enables the use of a wider range of products from different producers, fulfilling all the needs of customers. Standardisation also contributes to time and cost savings related to service and employee training.

“Manufacturers should/will continue to benefit from historical capital and resource expenditures through the efficient use of existing instrumentation,” concludes Owczarczyk. “ACS manufacturers should aim to provide systems with open architecture and a high level of compatibility to instil confidence among end users, motivating them to invest in automation.”