IAA May 08

May 2008

www.iaasiaonline.com

MICA(P) 327/10/2007 | ISSN 0219/5615 | PPS 1561/7/2008 (000553)

Power Generation:

A Planet Of Possibilities M2M: Moving Towards

Pressure

Best Practices: Not A

Mainstream Transmitters Standard Procedure

Poster 11_Micrologix_310308.eps 4/2/08 1:11 PM Page 1

LISTEN. THINK. SOLVE. ®

Everything You've Everything You’ve Come ComeTo To Expect From From A A MicroLogix MicroLogix – And More More micrologix 1100 MICROLOGIX

The The newest newest member member to the family, family, the the MicroLogix MicroLogix 1100, 1100, provides many of the the same same features features you’ve you've come to expect from the MicroLogix family. of With outstanding outstanding flexibility flexibility and enhanced networking capability, capability, the the With MicroLogix 1100 1100 is is meant meant to to compliment compliment the the coverage coverage area area of of MicroLogix MicroLogix MicroLogix controllers at at an unbeatable price. controllers • Allows Allows online online editing editing • • Built Built in in EtherNet/IP EtherNet/IP port port for peer to peer messaging • • Embedded Embedded LCD for controller and I/O status and • and simple simple operator operator interface interface for for messages, and and bit/integer bit/integer monitoring and manipulation messages, • More More memory memory for data logging and recipe enables remote monitoring and • applications that that are are memory memory sensitive applications • Embedded Embedded web web server server allows allows aa user user to to custom custom configure configure data data from from the the controller controller • to be be displayed displayedas asaaweb webpage pagePictures Picturestoto use: Product, in the attached to use: Product, (in(the attached file),file), people and andindustries industries(warehouseing, ( warehouseing, logistics, cargo handling) people logistics, cargo handling)

Rockwell Automation Southeast Asia Pte Ltd Tel:Southeast 65 6356 9077 Fax: Rockwell Singapore Automation Asia Pte Ltd65 6356 9011 Indonesia Tel: 62 21 573 Fax: 62 21 573 5679 Singapore Tel: 65 6356 9077 Fax: 655680 6356 9011 Malaysia Tel: 603 Fax: 8996621688 603 8996 1699 Indonesia Tel: 62 21 573 5680 21 573Fax: 5679 Malaysia

Thailand

ENQUIRY NO. 795 MICROLOGIX1100–SP001–EN–P_SEA Printed Sep 06

Allen-Bradley

•

R o c k w e l l S o f t wa r e

Tel: 603 8996 1688 8996 Fax: 1699632 810 4397 Philippines Tel: 632 Fax: 893 603 9712

Philippines Tel: 632 893 810 4397 Thailand 9712 Tel: 662 Fax: 936 632 1500 Fax: 662 936 1510 Tel: 662 936 1500

Fax: 662 936 1510

A Lifetime of Commitment to Automation

S

olutions

for Energy Management

Carlo Gavazzi Automation Singapore Pte Ltd 61 Tai Seng Avenue #05-06 UE Print Media Hub Singapore 534167 Tel: +65 6746 6990 • Fax: +65 6746 1980 Website: www.carlogavazzi.com.sg • Email: info@carlogavazzi.com.sg

ENQUIRY NO. 794

contents May 2008

ISSUES & INSIGHTS

24

M2M: Moving Towards Mainstream

With favourable expert consensus, M2M technologies continue to find new applications with ever expanding markets. By Augustine Quek

24

M2M

Moving Towards Mainsteam

CONTROL POINT

30

RFID’s Role In Warehouse Management

Ensuring the success of any RFID warehouse database management solution will be a focus on business process visibility, improvement and optimisation. By Chris Sharp, GM, Server & Tools Division, Microsoft APAC

SOFTWARE & NETWORKS

34 Applying SOA To Business Processes

Service-Oriented Architecture provides best practices for organising IT resources to enable organisations to better leverage business change. By Jason Bloomberg, managing partner, ZapThink

INSTRUMENTATION & MEASUREMENT

38

Pressure Transmitters: EDDL Equals Easy

EDDL technology makes sophisticated pressure transmitters easier to use.

By Dale Perry, pressure product manager and Jonas Berge, senior WebPlant consultant, Emerson Process Management

30

RFID's Role in Warehouse management

38

PRESSURE TRANSMITTERS: eddl equalS easy

2  industrial automation asia | May 2008

Industrious and Powerful.

Introducing NEW Wonderware Compact Panels Now, you can have a unified InTouch® HMI software & development environment—from machine level to ERP connectivity.

The world’s favorite open HMI software is now available in a family of compact panel solutions—all running Microsoft® Windows® CE. Gone are the limitations of proprietary panels that cost you more to support & integrate.

Go to www.wonderware.com/sales and contact your local Authorized Wonderware Distributor to order yours.

Wonderware of Singapore Pte Ltd 15 Changi Business Park Central 1, Level 4 Singapore 486057 Contact: (65) 6829 8181 info.singapore@wonderware.com

ENQUIRY NO. 781

There’s a reason it’s called Wonderware.

contents MAY 2008

SECTOR SPOTLIGHT

42

Power generation: a planet of possibilities

42

Power Generation: A Planet Of Possibilities The energy industry has to face up to the prospect of renewable energy as a basis for mainstream power generation. By Marcus Syn

45

Market Report: World Biofuel Demand To Rise

The world demand for biofuels is predicted to grow at a rate of 20 percent annually to 92 million metric tonnes in 2011. By Ned Zimmerman, analyst, The Freedonia Group

IN BUSINESS

46

49

Entrepreneurial Impetus: Starting From Scratch

Industrial Automation Asia (IAA) is published 8 issues per year by Eastern Trade Media Pte Ltd 1100 Lower Delta Road #04-02 EPL Building Singapore 169206.

Tel: (65) 6379 2888 • Fax: (65) 6379 2805 Website: www.iaasiaonline.com Email: iaa@epl.com.sg Subscription Rates: IAA is available to readers on subscription in Singapore at S$60.00 per annum. Subscription by airmail to readers in Malaysia is also at S$60.00 per annum; and Asia Pacific, America, Europe and other regions at S$100. Refer to the subscription card in each issue for further details.

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Beyond just raising and spending money, starting a company takes planning and dedication, and most of all teamwork. By Jim Pinto

No portion of this publication covered by the copyright herein

Vertical Dreams

publisher and editor.

Rockwell plans to focus on the verticals Life Sciences and Oil And Gas. This includes addressing the generic process industry and the expansion of the safety business.

By Derek Rodriguez

DESIGN FOCUS

52 Best Practices: Not A

may be reproduced in any form or means – graphic, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, taping, etc – without the written consent of the publisher. Opinions expressed by contributors and advertisers are not necessarily those of the

IMPORTANT NOTICE

The circulation of this magazine is audited by bpa world wide. The advertisers’ association recommend that advertisers should place their advertisements only in audited publications.

Standard Procedure

Best practices require a firm commitment in goal setting and understanding the manufacturing processes, and not using automation to set standards.

By Mogan Swamy

Refer to pg

for Advertisers’ Enquiry Numbers Keith Nosbusch, CEO Rockwell

Regulars 8 News 16 Profibus Association S E Asia 18 CAN in Automation 20 Fieldbus Foundation 21 EtherCAT Technology Group 56 Products & Services

49

vertical dreams

4 industrial automation asia | May 2008

63 Calendar of Events 64 Advertising Index / Ad Sales Office 64A Product Enquiry Card

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VEGA Instruments (SEA) Pte Ltd 25 International Business Park #04-52 German Centre Singapore 609916 Tel: +65 6564 0531 Fax: +65 6567 5213 Email: sales@sg.vega.com www.vega.com www.vega.com www.vega.com

EDITOR’s PAGE

So

Fast SoGood

Speed is a commodity afforded premium status by Man. In the Olympics, the 100 metre dash is the highlight of track events. Think of it, next to century sprinter Donovan Bailey, Haile Gebrsalassie, despite being a multiple record breaker for marathons, is a relative unknown.

In business, speed is considered no less important. The phrase ‘time is money’ might be a cliché best used by bosses, but it rings true nonetheless. The modern customer is spoilt for choice by a slew of companies offering similar products and solutions. What makes one stand out from the rest of the competition is speed and flexibility. This is something Machine-to-Machine technology brings to the table.

‘Smart ser vices’, a M2M-enabled provision, is defined by Qualcomm, a California-based wireless telecommunications research a n d d e v e l o pment company, as a differentiated post-sales product support, enabled by wirelessly capturing and analysing timely product performance information.

U s i n g t h e t e c h n o l o g y, a company can monitor the health and performance of its products at any given moment. In time to come, it will no longer be sufficient for companies to simply provide services. To keep up with competition and satisfy demands, ‘smart services’ is what they have to furnish customers with.

Already, an increasing number of players are becoming receptive to the technology as they come to recognise its benefits. French M2M company Anyware Technologies (which was recently acquired by Wavecom) claims a high double digit growth rate over the last few years. Manufacturing Insights, a research and advisory firm, forecasts a rise in employment of the technology, and credits it in part to lowered entry barriers.

The technology can also be seen on the silver screen. In the TV series ‘Heroes’, a boy possesses a gift – he can ‘talk’ to machines. In one scene, he uses a mobile phone to resignal traffic lights and locate a person. Like the young technopath, M2M communication, the other ‘actor’ in the scene, is bursting with adolescent potential, and can only get bigger and better as it grows older.

Manufacturing Insights, a research and advisory firm, forecasts a rise in employment of the technology, and credits it in part to lowered entry barriers

Published by:

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(A fully owned subsidiary of Eastern Holdings Ltd) Managing Director

Kenneth Tan

Managing Editor

Eileen Chan eileenchan@epl.com.sg assistant editor

Derek Rodriguez derekrodriguez@epl.com.sg Senior Editorial Assistant/Marketing Support

Norjana Taib norjanataib@epl.com.sg Editorial Assistant

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Circulation MANAGER

Caroline Rayney carolinerayney@epl.com.sg Circulation Executive

Agnis Lim agnislim@epl.com.sg Contributors

Augustine Quek, Holger Zeltwanger, Dale Perry, Jonas Berge, Ned Zimmerman, Jim Pinto, Marcus Syn, Chris Sharp, Mogan Swamy, Jason Bloomberg Editorial Consultants

Jim Pinto

Industry Analyst

Alastair Ross Director, Codexx Associates Ltd

supported by:

EASTERN HOLDINGS LTD executive Board Chairman

Stephen Tay GROUP EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Kenneth Tan

Financial Controller

Robbin Lim

etm

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Trade Media Pte Ltd an Eastern Holdings Ltd company

Head Office & Mailing Address: Eastern Trade Media Pte Ltd 1100 Lower Delta Road #04-02 EPL Building Singapore 169206 Tel: (65) 6379 2888 • Fax: (65) 6379 2805 Website: www.iaasiaonline.com Email: iaa@epl.com.sg MICA (P) No. 327/10/2007 ISSN 0219/5615 PPS 1561/7/2008 (000553) Co Reg No. 199908196C

Derek Rodriguez Assistant Editor

6 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Colour Separation: Pica Digital Pte Ltd Printer: Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd

Lowest cost of ownership.

Process uptime.

Proven safety leadership.

There are other important numbers besides a SIL rating.

The fact is, SIL ratings on their own fall short of process functional safety. That’s because SIL ratings only measure the “fail safe” capability of a system. Fail Safe alone can have unintended consequences and higher risk factors associated with unplanned shutdowns. In the process industry, there are other safety-critical numbers that equate to uptime and optimal asset availability. There is only one vendor that can put up big numbers in up time, Triconex, the process safety leader.

Only Triconex Triple Modular Redundancy technology can truly deliver the lowest lifecyle cost—by preventing unplanned shutdowns 99.999% of the time. Avoid high costs and high risk. Don’t entrust the safety of your plant to lightweights whose sole idea of performance is a SIL number. Rely on Triconex, the experienced safety leader who delivers safety, uptime and the bottom line.

©2006 Invensys Systems Inc. All rights reserved. Invensys and Triconex are trademarks and registered trademarks of Invensys plc. All other trademarks noted herein are owned by their respective companies.

Industry News Siemens PLM:

CAD Technology Breakthrough Hannover, Germany: Siemens PLM Software launched its next breakthrough in digital product development with synchronous technology, a featurebased modelling technology, that provides users with up to 100 times faster design experience.

Launched in conjunction with Hannover Fair, the technology combines constraint-driven techniques with direct modelling, and is being integrated into the company’s next versions of NXTM and Solid Edge software.

Driving Source The technology simultaneously synchronises geometry and rules

New inference technology automatically infers common constraints and executes typical commands based on cursor position. This makes design tools simple to learn and use for occasional users, driving downstream use to manufacturing engineering and the shop floor.

Traditional parametric modelling serially applies rules to geometry, helping to automate planned change but not addressing unanticipated engineering changes. History-less modelling concentrates on geometry in an unconstrained manner, but sacrifices intelligence and intent. Direct editing minimises the need to understand a complex history but does not address features.

Breaking The Barrier “Synchronous technology breaks through the architectural barrier inherent in a history-based modelling

The image highlights an example of the faster design experience enabled by Siemens PLM Software’s new synchronous technology. This example shows a complex model with 950 features. If a user wanted to edit the circular (cyan) face to change its diameter, it would take 63 seconds using traditional editing techniques. With synchronous technology, it takes 1.5 seconds.

through a new decision-making inference engine. It allows users to reuse data from other CAD systems without remodelling. Users can succeed in a multi-CAD environment with a flexible system that enables them to edit other CAD system data faster, regardless of the design methodology.

The technology also provides a new user interaction experience that simplifies CAD and makes 3D as easy to use as 2D. The interaction paradigm merges historically independent 2D and 3D environments.

8 industrial automation asia | May 2008

This image shows synchronous technology easily pulls the two orange sections of geometry into the CAD software dynamically for the desired result.

system,” said Dr Ken Versprille, PLM Research Director, CPDA. “Its ability to recognise current geometry conditions and localise dependencies in real time, allows synchronous technology to solve for model changes without the typical replay of the full construction history from the point of edit.”

The patent-pending technology was jointly developed between Siemens PLM Software’s NX and Solid Edge organisations. Siemens PLM Software’s synchronous technology will be implemented in the next versions of both Solid Edge and NX as a proprietary application layer built on its D-Cubed and Parasolid software.

The next versions are scheduled for launch on May 21 at the annual Siemens PLM Software Analyst and Media Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

This image highlights how synchronous technology enables the CAD software to automatically recognise geometric conditions such as symmetry. Here selecting the first cylindrical face to pull out automatically select the other side and makes the correct changes. This ensures models are edited and maintains design intent.

ENQUIRY NO. 3101

Industry News

APC Launches Energy Efficient Solutions Centre Singapore: APC has a Energy Efficient Solutions Centre in its new 2,300 sq m premises at Te c h p o i n t , Ang Mo Kio in George Kong Singapore.

According to Gartner, energy costs will emerge as the second-highest operating cost (behind labour costs) in 70 percent of existing data centre facilities worldwide by 2009. Improper planning of energy management, especially for data centres, can dramatically increase operation costs, decrease performance of the facility, as well as increasing the risk of downtime.

The Solutions Centre integrates various solutions from Schneider Electric companies including APC InfraStruXure data centre solutions, TAC building management system, Schneider Electric power monitoring system and Clipsal lighting control system.

George Kong, ASEAN VP, said: “Our initiatives support the nation’s drive to improve energy efficiencies, such as the Energy Efficiency Programme Office set up by the National Environment Agency in Singapore. We are providing the Solutions Centre as a platform for companies to familiarise with advanced concepts in power and cooling management that will help them save energy costs by up to 30 percent and future-proof their hardware investments.”

The larger space enables APC to build a Solutions Centre, dedicated to increasing the awareness and adoption of energy efficient systems for IT infrastructures in both local and foreign

companies, especially data centres that demand high energy consumption due to power and cooling needs.

According to IDC, over the next five years, the expense to power and cool the worldwide installed base of servers is projected to grow four times compared with the growth rate for new server spending. IDC expects server power and cooling costs to increase at an 11.2 percent CAGR over the forecast period. This expense is equal to 70 percent of the overall new server spending in 2010.

Some corporate customers in Singapore who are already partnering or working with APC and MGE to streamline their power and cooling at their data centres include Ascendas, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Daiwa Securities, Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers, Reuters, Sanofi Aventis, Sentosa Leisure Group and Tokyo Marine.

ENQUIRY NO. 3102

• •

email: sales.sg@ifm.com • website: www.ifm.com

ENQUIRY NO. 788

•

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 9

Industry News

Invensys To Provide InFusion Enterprise Control System Thailand: Invensys Process Systems has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract

by Simon Carves to provide an InFusion Enterprise Control System through an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for PTT Polyethylene (PTT PE).

Invensys will provide a complete enterprise control solution for the grassroots, 300,000 t/y LDPE plant that will be built at the Padaeng industrial estate in Thailand.

The new plant will be located at PTT PE’s existing complex in Map-Ta-Phut as part of its cracker complex. It will incorporate Basell Lupotech technology. The plant is due onstream in the first quarter of 2010, using ethylene supplied from the adjacent PTT PE ethane cracker plant as its raw material.

ENQUIRY NO. 783

ENQUIRY NO. 3103

10 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Intel Capital’s US$500 Million China Technology Fund Beijing, China: Intel Capital, Intel Corp’s global investment organisation, has its second China investment fund, the Intel Capital China Technology Fund II. The US$500 million fund will be used for their investments in wireless broadband, technology, media, telecommunications and ‘clean tech’ that complement the company’s corporate initiatives and help expand Arvind Sodhani technology market segments in China.

Said Arvind Sodhani, president: “Since 1998, Intel Capital has invested in more than 70 companies across China and Hong Kong. We aim to foster innovation and local entrepreneurship, while enriching the technical capabilities and global competitiveness of technology companies in the region.”

Their first US$200 million fund has been fully invested in local Chinese companies. The company also announced two Chinese investments with the fund: Holdfast Online Technology Co Ltd, which provides a platform to host third-party operator LAN-based or console games and Newauto Video Technology Inc, which manufactures and sells video equipment, network solutions and system integrations for TV stations across China.

Newauto also provides digital content editing and sports programme live-broadcasting services.

ENQUIRY NO. 3104

Industry News

Yokogawa And Pepperl+Fuchs Release New Solution

Tokyo, Japan: Yokogawa and Pepperl+Fuchs have a solution for managing the physical layer of Foundation fieldbus H1. This is being released as one of the diagnostic solutions of Plant Resource Manager (PRM) R3.02.

PRM is a key component of Yokogawa’s VigilantPlant Asset Excellence initiative. The integration of the Pepperl+Fuchs Advanced Diagnostics Module (ADM) and Diagnostics Manager software into PRM R3.02 enables users to access a consolidated supervisory window within the PRM R3.02 environment. Customers can view summary information on individual segments that provides details on each connected field device, enabling efficient rootcause analysis in real-time and keeping plants operating smoothly.

ADM’s online monitoring capabilities provide actionable information through PRM’s user interface, indicating changes in the fieldbus physical layer before they become critical.

Via PRM R3.02, all information can be displayed on the operator stations of Yokogawa’s Centum VP and Centum CS3000 R3 production control system.

ENQUIRY NO. 3105

www.turck.com

Modular rFId-SySteMS • Speed

Highest application rate: Typical read-write time 0.5 ms per byte

• Flexibility

Tokyo, Japan: Yokogawa has acquired Analytical Specialties Inc (ASI), a company with a unique gas analyser technology. With this acquisition, the company is adding the TruePeak Tunable Diode Laser Gas Analysers to its analyser lineup.

In order to win a greater share of this market, Yokogawa has decided to establish a Laser Analytical Division within its US subsidiary as a core unit for the industrial automation environmental and measurement business.

Yokogawa expects that the Tunable Diode Laser Spectroscopy (TDLS) market will be worth US$150 million by 2013 and plans in that year to have sales of US$30 million and the largest market share.

ENQUIRY NO. 3106

• Universal applicability

Durable FRAM data carriers – also for special applications direct mounting on metal, in autoclaves temperatures up to 210 ºC

• Integration

Interfaces for PROFIBUS-DP, DeviceNet™, Ethernet Modbus-TCP, PROFINET IO, EtherNet/IP™, Programmable gateway

TURCK Singapore Pte. Ltd. 25 International Business Park, #03-22/23 German Centre, Singapore 609916 Phone +65 6562 8716, Fax +65 6562 8719, E-Mail Singapore@turck.com

Sense it! Connect it! Bus it! Solve it!

ENQUIRY NO. 785

Yokogawa Acquires ASI

Modular mounting 2, 4, 6 or 8 channel interfaces and read-write heads with different application optimised housings

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 11 S0221_RFID_80 x 240_EN.indd 1

02.04.2008 12:21:43

Industry News

AMT Partners With Bosch Rexroth Michigan, USA: Applied Manufacturing Technologies (AMT) has sponsored the development of a visionbased robotic workcell as a senior project at Lake Superior State University (LSSU) in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan.

Designed by the students, with support and guidance from AMT’s Jean-Pierre Rasaiah, the cell identifies and robotically packages consumer products from a moving conveyor. The workcell is based on a multi-axis workcell donated by Bosch Rexroth, including a conveyor system and a motion logic controller. To help complete the project, AMT was also able to arrange the use of a Stäubli RX60 robot & controller, a Cognex DVT Legend 520 SmartImage camera, and a Siemens HMI panel.

Parameters for the project define a successful running cycle to continue for ten hours with no more than one hour of recovery time.

Once the workcell is complete, the workcell will be used as a training device for future students and AMT personnel alike.

0324-集博-1.pdf 2008/3/27 4:01:42 PM

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ENQUIRY NO. 782

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12 industrial automation asia | May 2008

ENQUIRY NO. 3107

Wonderware Receives Award Singapore: Wonderware has received Frost and Sullivan’s 2008 ‘Product of the Year’ in the human-machine interface (HMI) category. In Indonesia, Wonderware has been conferred the 2008 Frost & Sullivan Indonesian Award for market leadership in SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) for 2007.

Frost and Sullivan said that customers using InTouch 10.0 HMI and System Platform 3.0 software identified several outstanding features including ease-of-use offered by ArchestrA graphics, scalability via objectbased creation, interoperability with other hardware and robust customer support.

ENQUIRY NO. 3108

Industry News

California, USA: RAE Systems Inc received European ATEX safety certification for use in explosive atmospheres or hazardous environments, for two third-generation photoionisation detector (PID) based instruments, the MiniRAE 3000 and ppbRAE 3000.

Both of these products have applications in industrial settings, environmental monitoring, indoor air quality, and hazardous materials response. These products are used to specifically measure where hydrocarbon-based chemicals pose a toxic threat. They can be used for both leak detection and industrial safety.

ENQUIRY NO. 3109

Endress+Hauser Honours The Work Of Its Inventors Eimeldingen, Germany: Over 200 inventors from the Endress+Hauser Group have gathered for their ‘Innovators’ Meeting 2008’ in Eimeldingen, South Germany near Basel.

They celebrated the new all-time record of 182 patent applications in 2007 – and cheered the winners of the ‘Patent Rights Incentive Awards’ which honours patents with a particularly substantial and positive effect on business development.

“Our ‘Patent Rights Incentive Programme’ has really shown how effective it is”, said Dieter Schaudel, board member in charge of Technology, Engineering and IT. “Since we launched our incentive programme eight years ago, the number of annual patent applications of the Endress+Hauser Group has more than trebled”.

Set up about 10 years ago, Endress+Hauser’s PatServe patent division has meanwhile filed patents for 1,100 inventions, 182 last year alone. Today, Endress+Hauser holds over 3,900 living patents and patent applications.

ENQUIRY NO. 3110

s Now o U l l Ca ree Dem F For A Panasonic Electric Works Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd

(Automation Control System Divi-

ENQUIRY NO. 801

RAE Systems Receives ATEX Certification

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 13

i

Industry News

Bombardier Delivers The Ethernet Train

Berlin, Germany: Regional trains in Germany and the Netherlands are currently being delivered by Bombardier with an on board Ethernet network.

Four hundred units of Westermo’s Redfox have been supplied for the

first projects. Up to now, Ethernet protocol has been used on board only in CCTV (Close Circuit Television).

Most of the different systems in a train have traditionally had separate interconnection or networks.

For train operation, a railway-

specific network called TCN (Train Communication Network) was used.

In the first projects, the old and new networks – Ethernet rings and TCN – will coexist, but Ethernet will fully replace the TCN in two or three years.

“The network carries all data types needed for control, security and passenger information. All except signalling and Internet access will be managed through the Ethernet protocol,” says Klas Englund, TCMS product manager at Bombardier Transportation Sweden.

A new front was developed by Westermo with M12 connectors.

Adjustments have also been made to meet the railway specific standards regarding EMC (Electromagnetic Compatibility) and other environmental requirements. Engineers have developed a specific software that has been integrated into the switches.

SI-492-CF Vielfalt 85x114NEW

ENQUIRY NO. 3111 18.01.2006 9:14 Uhr

Chainflex .Tested! ®

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14 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Over 750 special Chainflex® cables for dynamic systems available, no cutting charges. igus Singapore Pte Ltd. Phone +65-6487 1411 Fax +65-6487 1511 asia-sales@igus.com.sg

ENQUIRY NO. 797

ENQUIRY NO. 736

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Industry News

APPOINTMENTS & NOTICES Mate Appoints Sales VP Mate Precision To o l i n g , a manufacturer of CNC punch press tooling, has appointed Jim Thomas to the position of VP of international sales. Mr Thomas will have responsibility for planning and directing all of Mate’s international sales activities.

B&R Opens Seventh Office In China Shenyang, China: B&R, the Austrian automation specialist, has established an office in Shenyang in order to further expand business on the Chinese market.

Following the Shanghai, Xi’an, Jinan, Guangzhou, Beijing and Chengdu offices, Shenyang is the seventh B&R office in China and is also an important step in the B&R China marketing development strategy.

The target market of the Shenyang office consists of two parts: Process automation and OEM machine manufacturing, mainly for the metallurgy, power generation, petrochemical, wind energy, printing and packing industries.

ENQUIRY NO. 3113

SCS President Re-appointed

27 March 2008.

Wilson Tan, the group CEO of Singapore Post, was re-appointed as the president of SCS to lead the infocomm professional body.

Introducing N-TRON’s 700 Series Fully Managed Industrial Ethernet Switches -40˚C to 85˚C Operating Temp with Full SNMP and Web Management

708TX $950

CEO For Citect Citect has installed Christopher Crowe (pic) as CEO, taking over the helm from John Ross who has announced his retirement after over 38 years within the electrical industry environment.

Henkel’s Chairman Kasper Rorsted is the new chairman of the Henkel Management Board. Commented Mr Rorsted: “One of the main focal points for 2008 will be the integration of the Adhesives and Electronic Materials businesses acquired from National Starch.”

ENQUIRY NO. 3112

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$1350 • • • • • •

Plug-and-Play EtherNet/IP™ IGMP Support Configurable Alarm Contact cUL1604, Class I, Div. 2 Includes N-View™ & N-Ring™ Technology ESD and Surge Protection on All Ports Hardened Metal Enclosure e-mail: N-Tron_sales@n-tron.com N-TRON, Corp tel: (251) 342-2164 Mobile, AL (251) 342-6353 www.n-tron.com fax:

® N-TRON, Corp. N-TRON and the N-TRON logo are trademarks of N-TRON, Corp. Prices show are list, FOB Mobile, AL. EtherNet/IP is a trademark of ControlNet International used under license by ODVA.

ENQUIRY NO. 793

The Singapore Computer Society (SCS) announced the new line-up of its council members at the SCS Annual General Meeting on

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 15

Industry News

New Thin-Film Solar Cell Plant Osaka, Japan: Sharp Corp has made a total capital investment of approximately ¥72 billion (US$707 million) to build a thin-film solar cell plant in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture that is capable of boosting annual production up to a scale of 1 GW per year.

Production will begin by March 2010 with a 480 MW initial production capacity for solar cells. Combined with the 160 MW capacity of the Katsuragi Plant (Nara Prefecture), this will expand Sharp’s global total production capacity for thin-film solar cells to 1 GW in April 2010.

The market for photovoltaic (PV) solar cells is expected to expand rapidly. And as the number of largescale solar power generation systems around the world increases, it is said that solar power will become a staple of renewable energy in the future.

ENQUIRY NO. 3114

Adlink Acquires Ampro Ta i p e i , Ta i w a n : A d l i n k Technology has completed the acquisition of Ampro Computers.

The addition enables Adlink to offer the Extreme Rugged range of industrial products and services for use in aircraft, trains, ships and other environments that subject equipment to extended temperature, shock and vibration.

The acquisition has received the required approvals from both the workforce representatives and the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs. Adlink is now the owner of all shares outstanding in Ampro, making the new entity the third largest industrial PC manufacturer in Taiwan.

ENQUIRY NO. 3115

16 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Metso Park To Be Established In India Rajasthan, India: Metso is planning to invest approximately €30 million (US$46.8 million) to establish ‘Metso Park’, a multi-functional industrial facility, in India.

The new facility will host operations and selected key suppliers. It will initially cater to meeting the rapid growth in demand for mineral products and services in India.

With the investment, Metso aims to enhance its logistics, inventory control, operational quality and productivity as well as supplier relationships. The implementation of the concept is subject to regulatory approvals.

The park will be located near the city of Alwar in the state of Rajasthan in northwest India and will include office premises, several workshops, warehousing and a logistics centre. Partners operating out of there will establish their own workshops at the site and will benefit from the infrastructure services provided.

It will initially manufacture components of mobile crushing and screening plants and conveyors, and pumps and rubber products for the construction and mining customers in India. Some products and components will also be exported.

Operations are expected to commence in the second half of 2009, and the number of employees at the facility is expected to rise to 700 by 2012.

Late last year, the company announced a €12.5 million (US$19.5 million) investment in expanding foundry and manufacturing operations and office facilities in India. Net sales in India were approximately €150 million (US$234 million) in 2007. The company employs today some 700 people in India.

ENQUIRY NO. 3116

Industry Updates PIA Vietnam: Promoting The Development In The Region PROFIBUS 27% Others 17%

4-20 MA 28%

HART 14%

DeviceNet 10% Foundation Fieldbus 4%

The Profibus stand showed the latest products from different companies which included a ‘live’ demonstration of the full capabilities of the technology, with migration strategy for Foundation Fieldbus Technology.

Over 400 customers came and visited the stand to talk with the local experts and take the chance to join the single day technical seminar at the show.

ENQUIRY NO. 3117

SATELLINE® Radio Modems Holding all the reins.

SATEL keeps production under your control. Monitoring of machines and different working locations is achieved wirelessly using real-time data transfer networks. Remote control saves unnecessary steps and allows monitoring from afar. Easy and cost-effective!

Industry has more than 20 years’ experience of SATEL radio modems. They can be used to set up flexible management, monitoring and control systems, such as robotruck guidance, electronic stock management and access control. A dedicated operatorindependent network means lower costs and facilitates use over short and long distances.

Radio modems are suitable especially for places where mobile machinery or a wide operating area make cabling difficult.

ALARM

SATELLINE radio modems are used e.g. in materials management, access control and alarm transfer.

SATEL specialises in the design and manufacturing of wireless data transfer devices. SATEL products are used in demanding wireless data transfer systems all over the world.

Satel (SEA) Pte Ltd

Tel: +65 6291 2925 • Fax: +65 6293 8727 • Email: jeffreylim@satel-sea.com • Web: www.satel-sea.com

ENQUIRY NO. 796

he PIA Exhibition in Vietnam was picked to be an automation showcase and technical support base to promote the development and application of Profibus in the region.

In addition to immediate advantages like reduced wiring and installation costs, fieldbus acts as an enabler to a new level of asset management effectiveness. This means reduced downtime through better diagnostics, simplifying routine maintenance and supporting predictive maintenance.

“Manufacturers are realising the benefits of Profibus with its ability to address the needs of multiple manufacturing domains by integrating process instrumentation seamlessly,” said Henk Schaake, president, Profibus Association South East Asia.

Today, there are over 20 million installed devices today using the technology. Out of this over 4.5 million have been used in the process industry based on market data end of 2006.

How much the technology is being used in Vietnam was established based on visitors questionnaires completed during this event.

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 17

Newsdesk

A Standard Affair C

ranes and spreaders have to exchange command and status information. In the past, the manufacturers bilaterally agreed upon the interface between crane and spreader. So it was not possible to use a spreader from another manufacturer without re-programming the crane controller. With increasing functions of the spreader this has become more complicated. This was the reason why several spreader and crane manufacturers started specifying an open interface standard.

The specification was developed under the umbrella of the non-for-profit CAN in Automation (CiA) organisation.

CiA’s special interest group (SIG) decided to use highspeed CAN as communication interface, and CANopen as application layer.

Several spreader and crane manufacturers have started specifying an open interface standard.

The Outcome The developed CiA 444 CANopen device profile for spreader specifies also the content of the data to be communicated.

This includes the process data (commands and status information), configuration parameters as well as diagnostic data (emergency error codes and failure reports).

The CiA 444 profile specifies the use of CAN transceiver chips compliant to ISO 11898-2. Additionally it defines a transmission rate of 50 kbit per second with a bit-timing as specified in the CiA 301 CANopen application layer and communication profile specification. This low bit-rate allows network lengths up to one kilometre in maximum. Other bit-rates as defined in CiA 301 may be supported as well, eg 125 kbit per second at 500 m, or 250 kbit per second at 250 m, and 500 kbit per second at 125 m.

18 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Standardising the electronic interface eliminates the need for re-programming the crane controller when using another manufacturer’s spreader.

By Holger Zeltwanger, MD, CiA The CANopen application layer is mapped to the CAN data link layer protocols using the 11-bit CAN identifier.

The CANopen application layer defines the so-called Process Data Objects (PDO) that are mapped to single CAN data messages. The CiA 444 profile specifies the PDO communication behaviour and the PDO content.

From the point of the spreader, the first and second Transmit PDO (TPDO) transmit the status of different spreader functions, for example the status of the flippers, the telescopes, etc. The corresponding first and second Receive PDO (RPDO) contains commands to be executed by the spreader, for example to lock, to rotate or to skew the spreader.

In addition, the CiA 444 profile specifies some information parameters such as product year, spreader serial number, spreader tare weight, and rated capacity. These parameters are accessible by means of the Service Data Object (SDO). This CANopen protocol is mapped to two CAN data messages. It is a client/server protocol, meaning the client always takes the initiative to read or write data to the object dictionary of the server device. SDO communication is also used to configure the CANopen interface or the configuration parameters (eg to set date and time).

Classification System Different classes of spreaders are defined. Class-0 just uses proprietary TPDOs and RPDOs. They are not assigned any CAN-identifiers, which means that these spreaders have to be configured. Class-1 to class-4 spreaders implement the pre-defined two TPDOs and two RPDOs. These PDOs are fixed and cannot be configured. Depending on the class supported, the PDOs provide valid or invalid command and status data.

If the crane supports class-4 spreaders and a class-1 spreader is connected, the crane can only use the class-1 functionality.

If the crane support class-1 spreaders, and a class-4 spreader is connected to the crane, it is obvious that the crane cannot command class-4 functionality and cannot interpret all status data of the spreader. Nevertheless, the interoperability between crane and spreader is guaranteed. However, the lowest class limits the functionality that can be performed.

They contain among other information the standardised two-byte emergency error code (EEC). Besides, the EECs defined in CiA 301, CiA 444 specifies four additional codes (general warning, severe warning, general failure, and severe failure of the spreader).

The CiA 447 profile defines that the crane is the network management (NMT) master controlling the NMT state machine of the spreader by means of the two-byte NMT message with the highest-prior CAN-identifier. Both, crane and spreader, produce the 1-byte Heartbeat message indicating the NMT status (pre-operational, operational, stopped, just booted-up). If the Heartbeat is stopped, all devices consuming this message will generate an indication to their applications.

Emergency messages containing eight bytes of error information shall be supported by the spreader interface.

ENQUIRY NO. 3118

ENQUIRY NO. 775

The embedded network can be diagnosed and configured from the crane controller.

Working As One Crane and spreader manufacturers have developed the CiA 444 profile jointly. Some spreader devices use a CANopen network, while others use proprietary networks or the AS-Interface bus-systems. In order to have access to the single embedded modules of the spreader, the CANopen spreader interface may implement the CiA 302-7 CANopen-to-CANopen gateway or the CiA 446 CANopen-to-AS-Interface gateway. In both cases, you can diagnose and configure the embedded network from the crane controller.

Within the CiA non-profit organisation the CANopen special interest group (SIG) crane add-on devices has started a new project standardising the communication within straddle-carriers. The SIG will specify a CANopen-based communication between vehicle and spreader.

May 2008 | industrial automation asia  19

Foundation Fieldbus Device Registration Shows Growth ith the demand for Foundation technology on the rise, the pace of fieldbus device registration is increasing as well. The Fieldbus Foundation has already registered hundreds of fully interoperable instruments. Registered products range from transmitters and meters, to valve positioners, actuators, controllers and linking devices. These products are available from the world’s leading automation equipment suppliers.

The foundation’s online product catalogue gives registered device information, including which standard blocks were tested for interoperability, the presence of untested function blocks (if any), and additional useful information about the device.

T h e f o u n d a t i o n ’s r i g o r o u s interoperability test and registration procedures thoroughly examine and verify all aspects of the intelligent field device. The registration process is not a simple exercise in paperwork, but a detailed and methodical set of procedures that test all specified

functions of the device.

In order to fulfill the registration process, manufacturers must submit their devices for independent lab verification performed by the foundation at its facility in Austin, Texas, USA. The registration test procedures begin with Physical Layer testing, which validates the electrical characteristics of the field device.

Because of the rigorous physical layer requirement, end users can rely on the specified network when designing Foundation fieldbus segments.

In addition to thorough physical layer testing, Foundation-compliant devices must contain registered stack software. Registered field devices communicate in a known, common, specified manner and adhere to the critical timing requirements of the Foundation protocol.

Only after the device has met both physical layer and stack conformance criteria is it eligible for interoperability testing. The goal of this testing is to validate the implementation of the

device user layer, or function block application.

All aspects of the function block application are meticulously examined, including mode and status behaviour, parameter conformance, alert handling, trending, simulation and power failure recovery.

End users purchasing fieldbus p ro d u c t s c a r r y i n g t h e o f f i c i a l registration ‘checkmark’ seal have the assurance that different devices, from different manufacturers, possibly using different physical layers or different stack configurations, will interoperate fully on a given Foundation fieldbus segment.

Fieldbus End User Seminars Planned Across The Globe Location

Date

Event & Contact Information

Cherry Hill, New Jersey, USA

May 8, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Jurong, Singapore

May 16, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Mexico City, Mexico

June 10, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Qindao, China

June 19, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam

July 22, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Manila, Philippines

Sept 23, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Guangzhou, China

Nov 6, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Savannah, Georgia, USA

Nov 6, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Nov 20, 2008

Foundation Fieldbus End User Seminar

Suntec, Singapore

Dec 2–5, 2008

OSEA Exhibition

ENQUIRY NO. 3119

20 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Asia Technical Committee Spring Meeting Eighty-six participants attended the spring meeting of the ETG Technical Committee and the associated training classes.

The Technical Committee meets twice a year to discuss the results of the various working groups and task forces, pass implementation guidelines and implement new work groups.

On topic at the recent spring meeting was the EtherCAT master/master communication: the protocols and services are part of the specification since 2005 and are also included in IEC 61158, now a uniform configuration interface was introduced.

The Technical Committee is accompanied by training classes which are also open to all ETG members. The fall meeting will take place Sept 23–24. ■

IEC-Standardisation Of Protocol The EtherCAT Technology Group started the IEC-Standardisation of the Safety over EtherCAT protocol. The specification was submitted during the last meeting of the IEC SC65C WG12 working group in Nagoya, Japan.

Safety over EtherCAT was developed according to IEC 61508 and can be integrated in EtherCAT devices where functional safety is needed. The technology meets SIL 3 requirements (respective class 4 of EN 954), certified products have been used in the field since 2005. ■

Implementation Guideline ETG has prepared an implementation guideline that can serve as a ‘Quick Starter’ for an EtherCAT Slave Device implementation. It describes from a very practical point of view how to begin a successful implementation project. This document can be downloaded free of charge from the website. ■

Publication of Standards IEC has now published the EtherCAT subset of IEC 61158 and IEC 61784-2 in a pack named ‘IEC FIELDB-CPF-12’. The package consists of the EtherCAT protocol and service specifications from IEC 61158, the device classes specified in IEC 61784-2 and the generic installation guidelines of IEC 61918. Furthermore, the drive profile standard IEC 61800-7 with its EtherCAT mappings of the CANopen and Sercos drive profiles was also published. ■

ETG At Hannover Messe With over 5000 exhibitors from 60 countries, Hannover Messe (Hannover Fair) is an important platform for technical innovations. This year Japan was the official partner country of the show, and more Japanese exhibitors and visitors than usual attended the show.

The 48 Japanese ETG members were greeted with a special display at the joint booth of the technology organisation. Japanese companies form the largest group among the 120 Asian ETG member companies, followed by Korea, China and Taiwan.

At the EtherCAT booth, 54 exhibitors showed over 150 different products: controller, PLCs, I/O, servo and variable speed drives, sensors, hydraulic and pneumatic valves, HMI, control panels, slave controller chips, development kits, and infrastructure components. There was a large selection of EtherCAT master implementations: over 20 different master devices utilising 12 different operating systems. ■ ENQUIRY NO. 3120

April May 2008 | industrial automation asia 21

Smart Wireless unlocks your plant’s

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and industrial Wi-Fi standards, Emerson Smart Wireless economic and technical barriers to the information you to wireless asset and people tracking, it’s everything

ENQUIRY NO. 804

true potential.

issues & insights

M2M:

Moving Towards

Mainstream With favourable expert consensus, M2M technologies continue to find new applications with ever expanding markets. By Augustine Quek

Erkin Sahin, Turkey

2M refers to data communications between machines. M2M most commonly refers to Machine-toMachine but has sometimes been referred to as Man-to-Machine, Machine-to-Man, Machine-to-Mobile and Mobile-to-Machine. M2M also means Mobile-to-Mobile for wireless telemetry or telemetric technologies.

NASA was an early pioneer in the use of telemetry extensively from the ver y beginning of the space programme. Large oil and gas companies and electric utilities,

24 industrial automation asia | May 2008

through the use of extensive customer built dedicated data networks, were among the first private organisations to use telemetry.

Offshore Tracking A typical example would be an offshore inventory management system based on mobile computing and barcode technology, such as that from a partnership between SAP consultancy Absoft and mobile/AutoID solution specialist Arnlea Systems.

The mobile data system automates the processes used to track the

movement of materials between onshore and offshore sites and is set to be rolled out across a range of operated platforms in the North Sea, after successfully completing a pilot project.

Handheld computers with integrated barcode readers are used by personnel to read barcodes attached to all material items to identify the items and capture details of transactions performed on them.

Robust barcodes attached to individual items, including storage bins, are scanned to automate the processes associated with tracking the movement of materials between onshore and offshore sites, to ensure accurate physical inventory management.

Going Wireless Ford Motor Co, for example, is preparing to open what it says is its first completely wireless assembly factory, the F-150 truck assembly facility in Dearborn, Michigan along the River Rouge.

The plant, a body shop and final staging area where cars are assembled and prepped before being shipped, is outfitted with business technologies, including automated inventory-replenishment triggers, radio frequency technology, and an Ethernet GigaMan data-transport network with gigabyte uplinks for transferring and receiving data.

Ford is using a wireless infrastructure made by WhereNet Corp throughout the area surrounding the factory. New to the site is a factory information system, in which software will monitor tooling, conveyers, robots, and other machines to detect and record system faults, and variances in cycle times and throughputs.

The system also incorporates the process-control boards and paging system, where maintenance personnel could be paged if a tooling problem occurs.

Convenient Capability In fact, Ford is already using M2M to improve productivity. The company claims the world’s largest wireless quality control monitoring, product tracking, and inventory management system at their Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville.

Quality control inspectors, forklift operators and clerks, and shipping staff use wireless, pen-based portable teletransaction computers, or PTCs, t h ro u g h o u t t h e m a n u f a c t u r i n g process.

For example, quality inspectors need only enter a personal access code into a PTC at the start of a shift, and make choices from a series of lists displayed on the screen, without writing down anything at all. And all information

ENQUIRY NO. 790

This information is transmitted automatically via a docking station into SAP, where it is integrated with other relevant logistics and maintenance data and business processes.

Automated processes for goods receipts, goods issue, physical inventory and returns processing have been incorporated into the solution in order to simplify these processes, reduce processing times and ensure accurate inventory levels to support the operations.

The pilot project was undertaken with international drilling contractor KCA Deutag on behalf of its client CNR International and the system is now to be extended to all five of CNR’s operated platforms in the North Sea. Other terms like Machine-to-Human (M2H) and Machine-to-Enterprise (M2E) are starting to emerge to segment the pervasive nature of the M2M term. It is therefore common, to find large factories employing M2M solutions.

May 2008 | industrial automation asia  25

entered on the PTCs, which can be used anywhere in the manufacturing complex, is transmitted instantly to a central mainframe computer.

At the start of the manufacturing process, each manufactured unit is assigned a serial number. As a unit enters an area of the plant, the inspector’s PTC lists the options pertinent to that area and shows which options were ordered for that particular truck. The inspector enters the inspection results for each option - defect or no - on the PTC. Farther on down the assembly line, in the same area of the plant, a quality upgrader’s PTC displays the defects to be corrected. The system effectively prevents a unit from being sent on to the next area until the upgrader notes that all defects have been repaired.

Ford also applied the wireless LAN to materials tracking system.

The system tracks every component and box of material that enters the facility to its consumption point on the assembly line.

The wireless LAN even extends outdoors to the ship-out yard, where PTCs are used for tracking finished product inventor y. The wireless system not only tracks every truck’s

Simon Morris, Perth, Australia

issues & insights

The movement of materials between onshore and offshore sites can be tracked automatically using a mobile data system.

location in the yard, it also contains information about the truck, such as whether it’s scheduled for an engineering change, or for aftermarket work or body work, or whether a finance issue must be resolved before a truck can be shipped out.

Networking Applications M2M can also mean the family of sensors, middleware, software and applications that help improve efficiency and quality by tying

together a myriad of sensors with mission critical applications like asset management, ERP, and CRM. M2M I/O-modules can combine local intelligence with remote monitoring and control.

For example, local I/O control and datalogging can be written in simple BASIC code, and communicate with it from anywhere through SMS, Email, TCP-datalinks, Mobitex or even satellites (GPRS).

An actual example is the InfraLOGIC range of devices. These are programmable I/O controllers that can measure, control and log by themselves. InfraLOGIC devices report to or accept commands from remote systems like databases, mobile phones or visualisation tools.

The functionality of the units can be programmed in the BASIC programming language. From this programme inputs can be measured, outputs can be set and data can be logged locally or sent to the outside world through a TCP datalink over GPRS, via modem, in an SMS, and depending on the model - through Mobitex or via Orbcomm satellites.

The units can also receive commands through these same channels.

Increased Adoption Of M2M Technology

I

ndependent research and advisory firm Manufacturing Insights has a study titled Machine-to-Machine Communication: Technology Landscape and Value Chain Overview.

It finds that M2M communication, which has long been focused on wired and wireless communication technologies, is emerging as a foundation for costeffective, real-time visibility to assets and facilitates innovative ‘smart services’ business solutions.

These improve asset utilisation, boost service

26 industrial automation asia | May 2008

levels, and exploit new revenue opportunities.

In the report, the IDC company also concludes that a strong tendency towards ‘extreme verticalisation’ where M2M projects revolve around the application of technology to solve a specific task, limits growth in this fragmented space.

The company predicts that as technology barriers break down, M2M will become easier and less costly to implement and open the playing field to new participants and innovative M2M-based business

models. In addition, M2M will become an attractive option as executives look to adopt new revenue and growth opportunities and establish a competitive advantage.

“Until recently, the M2M space has been very much a Joe Barkai dedicated segment with providers identifying themselves exclusively as M2M providers.

However, several technology trends have lowered the barrier to entry for companies

that bring additional technologies surrounding M2M solutions,” states Joe Barkai, practice director, product lifecycle strategies, Manufacturing Insights, and author of the report.

Based on more than 20 interviews with M2M technology vendors and consultants, the report highlights critical attributes of successful implementations and provides a high level classification of the key business values experienced by adopters of M2M technology.

ENQUIRY NO. 3202

Smart & Green For example, the world’s ‘first wireless, battery-free’ sensor transmitter from EnOcean, that integrates all sensor functions into a single module, has been unveiled in North America for OEMs developing products for commercial building monitoring and control, industrial processes, lighting control, automated metering infrastructures, and home automation.

Sensor modules from EnOcean harvest tiny amounts of energy from their surroundings, enabling them to register detected values and transmit them wirelessly. Surrounding sources of useful energy are linear motion / pressure, light, temperature change, rotation and vibration.

Although EnOcean modules are low energy, they’re not low power, capable of transmitting up to 300 metres. This is possible because the transmission time is extremely fast. The duration of a typical EnOcean radio telegram is

less than one thousandth of a second. vehicle owners in the US were T h e m i c r o c o n t r o l l e r, t h e more likely to purchase a bundle of measurement circuitry and the RF telematics services if it included the transmitter of the wireless sensor are remote access capability. driven for just a few thousandths of a second per action.

A Burgeoning Technology Furthermore, EnOcean uses a According to ABI Research, the future system of distributed intelligence so landscape of cellular M2M service that everything else keeps working providers shows increasing variety in if one component fails. This means its business models, with three classes that each functional node has its of providers, each offering a different own local processor that detects mix of capabilities. measured data for example, controls Tr a d i t i o n a l m o b i l e n e t w o r k energy management and wireless operators (MNOs), mobile virtual transmission, and can make its own network operators (MVNOs), and a decisions. small number of specialised M2M As the scope of M2M has evolved, mobile operators (MMOs) all face the M2M device, software, network, specific challenges and opportunities and service market is expected to in delivering this emerging grow rapidly world wide between now technology. and 2010. Some estimates suggest the 2010 world market may exceed US$300 billion in annual revenue.

Where as there are some 500 million computers in the world and 1.5 billion cell phones & PDAs, it is estimated there are more than 38 billion other electronic devices that have information perhaps relevant to improving an enterprises operation.

A good example of a handheld M2M device would be the i-Palm, a The M2M device, software, network, and service personal remote control market is expected to grow rapidly world wide. device from Singaporebased M2M Technology Pte Ltd. It is The research also forecasts capable of wireless communications that revenues for cellular M2M with other devices that can be fitted communication services will rise into a car or a building. from approximately US$2 billion in In fact, remote activation of specific 2006 to more than US$8 billion in in-vehicle functions shows a high 2012. likelihood of dramatically raising Similarly, Juniper research preconsumer interest in telematics services dicts that real-time data monitoring, in future vehicles, according to a recent wireless telemetry or Automated study conducted for ATX Group, the Meter Reading (AMR) will lead the world’s second largest telematics evolving growth in M2M markets over provider to the automotive industry. the coming three years and beyond, Among the five telematics service with forecasted predict revenues package offerings included in the rising from a cumulative low of analysis (automatic crash notification, US$2 billion in 2006 to over the remote access services, GPS US$9 billion by 2009. location-based ser vices, vehicle ENQUIRY NO. 3201 information, and satellite radio), Chaleerat Ng, Thailand

The InfraLOGIC GPS module connects to the InfraLOGIC and makes GPS information available to the BASIC programme. Longitude and latitude are available as BASIC variables, and the GPS module can be configured to generate an alarm (that can be handled in BASIC) when the unit is moved outside a predefined area. For this function, the programme only needs to check an alarm variable and act upon it, rather than performing the complex coordinate calculations itself.

The programme can also use the GPS coordinates (and other information like direction and motion speed) for other functionality, like logging the unit’s position, or mailing/ SMS’ing the position on request, at powerup or on regular intervals.

In recent years, the cost of setting up and accessing wireless data networks (CDMA, GPRS, Mobitex, etc) has been dropping while the capabilities of these networks continues to increase.

With the increased awareness of potential environmental harm of new technologies, M2M now also includes technologies that leverages these networks in an environmentally sustainable way.

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 27

issues & insights

Product Highlights iWow: Wireless Communication Module

Tridium: Software Framework

The TR-800 module from iWow Connections features a quad-band GSM GPRS engine (GSM 850/EGSM 900/DCS 1800/PCS 1900). The module measures 41.2 (L) x 36.0 (W) x 3.00 (H) mm and weighs 8.3 g, inclusive of shielding.

It supports high speed GPRS; it is of device class B and multi-slot class 10 and is capable of downloads of up to 85.6 kbps. It has an onboard memory of up to 3MB and is compliant with CE mark, R&TTE, FCC, GCF, PTCRB and RoHS.

Tridium’s Niagara AX is a software f r a m e work that connects all the building operational functions together and creates a customised building information network.

It models the data and behaviour of the devices into normalised software components, providing a uniform view of device data to the enterprise via a wide variety of IP-based protocols, XML-based connectivity options, and open API’s.

Enquiry no. 3203

Enquiry no. 3205

M2M Technology: M2M Control Unit

Wavecom: Wireless Microprocessor

The M2M Control C200 by M2M Technology is available as DIN rail module with general purpose I/O for: eight digital inputs, eight digital outputs, six analogue inputs for voltage, temperature sensors or 4-20mA current loop sensors, and two analogue outputs.

It has an embedded BASIC interpreter. Direct command set for control over all I/O from remote or local console port. Web server has pages for configuration/ commissioning, testing, debugging and visualisation of process parameters and alarm alerts.

Wavecom’s Wireless Microprocessor WMP 100 is an embedded wireless computing core. It has a 32 bit ARM 9 beating at up to 104MHz. It can connect to a range of memory, keypad, GPIO, ADC, DAC, SPI, I2C, USB, RS232 UART, parallel port, and analogue and digital audio interfaces.

It combines high performance embedded processing and wireless connectivity in a single surface mount component. In combination with the company’s Open AT software suite, developers can create machine-to-machine applications in C-language that can also be maintained remotely, over-the-air, throughout their lifetime.

Enquiry no. 3204

28 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Enquiry no. 3206

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There are no more stock counts because every item is continuously sending a signal to a reader. What’s more, if the items have passed their expiration date, they scream to the reader: “I’m too old!”

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what businesses can do with RFID – companies can also look forward to increased operational efficiency, total supply chain visibility, better asset tracking, reduction in internal theft, flagging errors and container tampering issues, and better processes for product status verification.

Role In Warehouse Management Ensuring the success of any RFID warehouse database management solution will be a focus on business process visibility, improvement and optimisation. By Chris Sharp, GM, Server & Tools Division, Microsoft APAC

F

or a long time, radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has been used almost exclusively to track items as they moved from one place to another.

Today, however, the technology, which combines the benefits of the silicon chip and radio frequencies to provide increased levels of product and asset visibility across the supply chain, is facing a significant turning point. Companies in the manufacturing and retail industry are increasingly recognising the compelling business benefits it offers.

30 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Mind Boggling Imagine each and every item talking about itself as soon as it pulls into the warehouse without the need to register the items manually; all the relevant information is read from the items automatically.

Packing instructions pop up on your warehouse staff’s reader, and detailed item information is automatically entered into the inventory and purchasing areas of you business management software system. All you have to do is unload the truck.

Lost In Translation Tw o c u r r e n t m i s c o n c e p t i o n s challenge supporters of RFID. One is the perception that the technology is just a fancy tracking technology. Think ‘barcodes on steroids’.

Manufacturers and retailers in particular have had to contend with the high cost of hardware like tags and readers – especially in Asia Pacific where manufacturers face significant price pressure and margin squeeze.

Yet, the greater challenge for companies looking to adopt and leverage this technology has been the ability to build meaningful applications and that can be easily integrated with their back-end systems.

In fact, independent research firm Aberdeen surveyed more than 150 manufacturers using or planning to adopt RFID, and found that in the preceding year, RFID costs concerns had shifted away from a focus on tags and readers, and towards issues related to data integration.

The real value of RFID is in the ability of the organisation to leverage the data collected to become more efficient and agile. Ultimately the data itself becomes the most valuable corporate asset.

It enables the organisation to r e d u c e l o s s e s t h ro u g h t h e f t , mishandling or misplacement; improve overall profitability by reducing waste and increasing efficiency both within the enterprise and throughout the value chain.

The big question for those looking to integrate RFID technology into

warehouse inventory, orders, and fleet or vehicle management – essentially anything that improves supply chain visibility.

What developers in turn need is a Server Operating System that allows them to build applications which can read valuable RFID data without reinventing the wheel; one that puts real-time, end-to-end supply chain management within reach of every customer, spanning systems, people and processes, both within and across organisational boundaries.

This also goes a long way towards empowering users to make informed business decisions with real-time data from what may be geographically dispersed, yet integrated systems.

Cost Barriers Feeling the pressure to incorporate RFID into their manufacturing and logistics operations, some companies will tend to implement technology for technology’s sake. Buyers beware: Implementing RFID does not instantly guarantee a fast path to return on investment.

The reality: RFID technology isn’t new. It has been around for the past decade, whereas barcode technology has surpassed three decades. The promise of achieving greater return An Intelligent WMS on investment with RFID is not timeWith an integrated front- and back-end sensitive as many may believe; it is system, customers stand a lot to gain application-dependent. by connecting the data from their Depending on the needs of the RFID infrastructure into their Business company, developers can build Intelligence system. applications that address specific For example, by syncing the requirements of the business. These information derived from the shop include tracking and managing floor withUhr SQLSeite Ser ver Business SI-701-EasyChain 85x114 18.04.2007 15:29

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their business therefore is how they can use software operating systems to transform raw tag read events into useful business information via a rich, scalable event processing infrastructure.

RFID readers do not require a direct line of sight to their tags, unlike barcode readers.

Intelligence framework, businesses can analyse a variety of business metrics and easily determine how much inventory they are holding on a month-to-month basis or analyse out-of-stock trends.

On the other hand, companies that integrate RFID data with their enterprise resource planning (ERP)

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ENQUIRY NO. 798

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May 2008 | industrial automation asia 31

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supply chain, making it easier for them to then bring the data back into the core of the enterprise to their ERP systems.

All in all, this data can prove invaluable to management in addressing the many challenges facing them, such as the accelerating pace of business and increasing supply chain complexity, the need to optimise labour and control costs, and compliance with customer and regulatory requirements.

A warehouse worker might consult a handheld RFID scanner to both receive list orders y and find products.

software can further automate and streamline internal processes.

A warehouse worker, for example, might consult a handheld RFID scanner to both receive the list orders he is assigned to fill that day and find the products needed to

satisfy each picklist. As each item is scanned, the data is sent back to the ERP and warehouse management systems, all through the RFID infrastructure.

As a result, users have visibility into the products at all parts of the

Looking To The Future Looking forward, a critical factor in ensuring the success of any RFID deployment or warehouse database management solution will be a focus on business process visibility, improvement and optimisation. Unless all users are able to incorporate RFID into their existing applications and workflows, simply and easily, an RFID infrastructure will really become little but a high-tech tagging system.

ENQUIRY NO. 3301

Product Highlights Cristal: Warehouse Management System

Daifuku: Warehouse Management System

C r i s t a l ’ s Wa r e h o u s e Management System is a budget WMS that is designed to meet both 3PL and private warehouse operational requirement.

The database used by the system is Microsoft SQL Server and runs on Windows network. It can be deployed as a paperbased, RF/wireless based or a combination of both.

RF capability is enabled with IEEE 802.11b wireless network together with Windows Pocket PC based PDA with/without barcode scanner.

The functionality of the system includes receiving, cross-docking, split cases, putaway, load planning, picking, scan-pack, replenishment, despatch/shipping, stocktaking and cycle count, and kitting and Bill of Materials.

Daifuku’s eWareNavi WMS ensures inventory in real time, and can respond to unscheduled storage or retrieval.

The inventory status can be displayed by specifying aggregate and search conditions such as consignor code and item code. Modification of inventory data can also be done.

Printing of the work list is possible.

The hand-held terminal which is called RFT facilitates the operation at the distribution centre.

System can be enhanced easily at any time as required.

Various optional cross dock functions are offered. A work schedule data in CSV format provides an easy introduction of the system.

Enquiry no. 3302

32 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Enquiry no. 3303

software & Networks

Applying

SOA

Business Processes To

Service-Oriented Architecture provides best practices for organising IT resources to enable organisations to better leverage business change. By Jason Bloomberg, managing partner, ZapThink

n a properly architected ServiceOriented Architecture (SOA), companies must build business services that represent the data available to the business and the core functionality of the underlying systems.

Business people then must be able to compose those services into composite applications that implement agile business processes, configure those applications based upon the applicable business rules, and then expose them as services that can be composed into other processes.

Because of the business focus of such composite applications, we call them Service-Oriented Business Applications, or SOBAs. SOBAs provide a new type of business application. A new generation of such applications is poised to provide a process-driven approach to assembling logical flows of information from disparate data and information sources and provide a 34  industrial automation asia | May 2008

role-based, personalised presentation layer on top of those flows.

In this way, SOBAs close the loop on business process challenges by providing powerful tools to the linesof-business. No longer is IT getting in the way of business process; instead, IT serves as a critical enabler of business agility.

From SOBAs To Mashups There is a trend today that is bringing together the world of SOBAs and the new generation of collaborative Webbased technologies loosely referred to as Web 2.0.

Bringing Rich Internet Application technologies like Ajax, along with the collaborative nature of other Web 2.0 technologies to SOBAs are enabling a new form of composite application known as an enterprise mashup, which is a governed composition of loosely-coupled business services in a rich Internet based environment.

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From the business perspective, mashups represent a new class of user-centric capabilities that enable a broad range of new uses for software.

In fact, the shift of focus of enterprise architects implementing SOA from providing services to consuming them is leading to the growth of a diverse set of business-centric approaches to building, evolving, governing, and maintaining enterprise mashups.

One of the reasons why enterprise mashups are so compelling is because enabling business users to assemble ser vices, and thus create new applications, in flexible, innovative ways has broad, untapped business value.

For a mashup to truly be an enterprise mashup, however, requires governance. Clearly, no business would risk allowing any of its employees to assemble and reassemble business processes willy nilly, with no controls in place to ensure that the resulting mashups followed corporate policies.

Indeed, while some knowledge workers have the technical capabilities necessary to construct today’s mashups, the true promise of SOBAs depends upon user interfaces

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ENQUIRY NO. 799

SOA Governance The user interface this knowledge worker uses, therefore, must leverage the combination of the process definition, SOA and a comprehensive governance framework that guarantees that nobody will make changes to SOBAs that violate corporate policies.

Governance frameworks provide an infrastructure for creating, communicating, and enforcing corporate

policies across the organisation. IT governance in particular is a hotbed of activity today, not only because it’s vitally important for companies to govern their IT operations, but also because the business calls upon IT to provide governance tools to the business at large.

SOA governance in part focuses on the creation, communication, and enforcement of service policies to monitor their impact on business processes. Ser vice policies are metadata that consist of a set of constraints and capabilities that govern how ser vices and their consumers interact.

Simple policies typically include rules describing who can access a service and what credentials they need, how messages should be routed to the service, and what servicelevel agreements (SLAs) apply to the service. SOA governance applies to all of the artifacts of SOA, including process models and the components that underlie the services.

SOA governance requires that organisations take business

policies, typically in written form, and transform them into rules that can help automate the process of validating and enforcing compliance with those policies in both design time and runtime environments.

Companies must then manage policies through their entire lifecycle.

In general, policy lifecycle management within SOA focuses on ensuring the quality, performance and applicability of available services, enabling ser vice consumers to discover and reuse services as well as other artifacts, managing service versions, handling the security of services and other SOA artifacts, and assessing and managing the impact of change across all service consumers.

Managing policies also includes providing visibility into whether people are following policies, as well as handling policy infractions. Such policy management tasks are also an inherent aspect of IT governance, as well.

The approach companies should take to prevent their employees from wreaking havoc with their

ENQUIRY NO. 792

sophisticated enough for a broader business audience to use.

Once the organisation has such an interface in place, the users of that interface have unprecedented power to compose services and configure the resulting business processes.

In fact, such composition and configuration is how the business updates a SOBA, once the services that feed the SOBA are in place. SOBA configuration includes any change the business user would like to make, from the simplest adjustment of parameters to the most complex reorganisation of business-critical processes.

May 2008 | industrial automation asia  35

software & Networks

Software AG

Software AG

An enterprise mashup ensures the growth of the business will meet demand as the business environment evolves.

SOBAs, therefore, is to implement a governance framework. Just as no business would risk allowing any of its employees to assemble and reassemble business processes with no controls in place, they want to ensure that the resulting SOBAs followed corporate policies.

Building And Running SOBAs The first step to implementing a business process in an enterprise is to create a representation of a business process that human and/or machine-based systems can execute.

However, historically there has been little way to connect these meaningful diagrams into true composite applications.

An example of a business process model.

With the advent of SOBAs, users can actually execute their abstract business process representations. Since businessoriented users will rarely become programmers, these users are expecting the very same visual representations to be the primary way in which they can build SOBAs that will implement their process flow desires.

The second step to building SOBAs is to identify the services that are available to the enterprise.

Once the organisation has a visual representation of their business processes and clear definitions of the services available, what remains is to tie the business requirements to the functionality of the architecture in an agile way.

The technology work is done at this point—all that remains is the human side: issues of governance, change management, and responsiveness to customer needs.

The real work of building and running SOBAs, then, rests in the hands of the business. The business is in charge of dynamic business processes, while IT takes a supporting role, hidden behind the scenes as enablers of the services and SOBAs that make the enterprise mashups work. This is the true vision of the composition-driven nature of SOA: business empowerment through g o v e r n a n c e , a rc h i t e c t u re , a n d composition.

ENQUIRY NO. 3304

Business Infrastructure Software From Software AG

T

he core of Software AG’s Business Infrastructure offering is the webMethods Suite, which includes the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), the mission-critical piece of the infrastructure. Around the ESB, Software AG provides the critical ingredients to enable composition.

The Business Infrastructure product suite features data management with the Adabas 2006, which supports across mainframe, Linux, UNIX and Windows platforms.

Application Modernisation, the ability to open up business process without rip and replace, is possible with webMethods Legacy Modernisation. The ESB Platform combines application integration capabilities, high-speed messaging, support for B2B, legacy applications and eventdriven technologies.

The Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) is an

36 industrial automation asia | May 2008

integrated process platform offering simulation capabilities, monitoring, and analytics. Combined with the Natural business application development and deployment environment, it offers integrated capabilities to build and deploy Web 2.0 based SOBAs from within an Eclipse-based environment.

CentraSite establishes and enforces business policies and provides controls and enforcement mechanisms organisations need for successful SOA adoption.

The webMethods Optimise for Process, Optimise for Infrastructure, Optimise for B2B and Optimise for SAP gives both the business and IT insight to identify where the existing errors are occurring so they can address them immediately.

ENQUIRY NO. 3305

ENQUIRY NO. 784

instrumentation & Measurement

Pressure Transmitters:

EDDL Equals Easy EDDL technology makes sophisticated pressure transmitters easier to use. By (L) Dale Perry, pressure product manager and (R) Jonas Berge, senior PlantWeb consultant, Emerson Process Management

W

ithin the last few years many specialised pressure transmitters have been introduced. These transmitters specialise in areas such as DP Flow, Mass Flow, Safety Certified, and Diagnostics.

The value of specialised transmitters has been demonstrated to increase quality, throughput, or uptime.

Any added complexity of maintaining these transmitters through their life cycle, installation, start-up, routine maintenance or emergency maintenance could be a challenge to plants.

Evolution Of The Transmitter Many advances have been made on the hardware to make pressure transmitters easier to install and maintain. The standard hardware offering of just a bolt-on manifold is a thing of the past. Vendors now offer integral manifolds and a variety of primary elements for flow applications.

The transmitters arrive on-site calibrated, pressure tested, ready for installation.

The next frontier of making pressure transmitters easy to use was the display used to start-up, maintain, calibrate, and troubleshoot. Historically there was no 38  industrial automation asia | May 2008

display standardisation. The dilemma was that the pressure transmitter manufacturer could not dictate the system display or accessible transmitter functionality on a system.

It was primarily left up to the system vendor to create specialised screens that may or may not have included all the specialised functionality of pressure transmitter. It was not uncommon that devices that dud not come from the system vendor itself was at a disadvantage.

Things have changed. The HART Foundation, Foundation fieldbus, and Profibus collaborated on an enhancement of the EDDL (Electronic device description language) standard IEC 61804. The enhancements take the complexity out of a sophisticated transmitter through an easy to use display.

Enhanced EDDL has all the screens embedded in the standard device integration file so now the transmitter manufacturer dictates the display the user sees. No more partial functionality, limited data, and limited wizards to perform multi step task.

Manufacturers compete to create the easiest to use display. The other big change is that since enhanced EDDL is a standard, any manufacturer can implement it in their systems.

Before enhanced EDDL there was no graphics for quick visualisation of the pressure transmitter diagnostic status nor could you look at the current PV and tell what the pressure was two minutes ago. And if the device had multiple variables there would be multiple numbers to look at and do math and correlation in your head.

Maintaining & Troubleshooting Figure 1 is a current enhanced EDDL screen in use today.

It is easy to see how it makes working with a pressure transmitter much easier. On this one screen, you can determine the transmitter status, current PV, and perform basic configuration, task.

The most obvious graphic is trending chart. This is a standard graphic in enhanced EDDL. In this case, the chart is displaying the last 10 minutes of pressure data. The chart has multiple colour lines representing the sensor limits and calibrated range visible at a glance.

Figure 3 demonstrates how easy it is to see all variables within a device at a glance. As technology has advanced to allow a pressure transmitter to have more than one variable, it is important how to display those variables.

In this case each variable has its own tab for detailed information but many times you are interested in all the variables. In this case the needles turn red if the variable status is something other than Good.

Figure 3: Each variable has its own tab for detailed information.

Figure 1: A typical enhanced EDDL process variable screen.

Figure 2 demonstrates a very powerful tool that allows manufacturers to implement graphics that change to help guide technicians through a process, troubleshoot, or in this case, transmitter diagnostic status.

Calibration Technology has enabled high-performance pressure transmitters that are very stable and in most applications the sensor rarely needs calibration, although in applications requiring high accuracy, or where ambient condition adversely affects the transmitter, licensing requirements, or in some cases the law requires calibration must be done more often.

A plant may have several hundreds of pressure transmitters, and they may be a mix of different brands, different models, and even using different protocols.

Over the years, as part of natural replacement, many new versions of these transmitters make it onto the site.

Transmitter diagnostics can be categorised by severity so the technician can immediately determine the status.

Indicates normal operation.

Informative. No action required.

Indicates maintenance needed soon.

Indicates the pressure transmitter is not operational

Figure 2: Transmitter status graphics.

May 2008 | industrial automation asia  39

instrumentation & Measurement Mastering this mix of pressure transmitters presents a challenge to technicians tasked with calibration. Enhanced EDDL has made this task easier also by embedding wizards to take a technician through all the required steps in the required sequence.

Diagnostics Enhanced EDDL graphics makes troubleshooting a pressure transmitter easier. For example, the Transmitter Status icon changes according to the health of the transmitter.

Images are also be used to lead the technician to the root cause of the problem taking the guesswork out of troubleshooting.

Figure 4 shows an example of a pressure module failure. Prior to EDDL the technician would have received a message such as ‘Pressure Sensor Update Failure’ or an even more cryptic message about an ‘Unknown Software Error’ or worse yet ‘Error 37’, without any clue as what action to take.

diagnostic rich process data information. Figure 5 illustrates the effective use of enhanced EDDL charts where the user can visually see the standard deviation (process noise) has changed and the mean hasn’t, a typical indication a impulse line has plugged.

Figure 5: Advanced diagnostics statistical process monitoring.

Advanced Diagnostic transmitters may also include other data logging capabilities to help indicate extreme conditions that could shorten the life of a pressure transmitter. Figure 6 shows an example of diagnostic display utilising gauges to give the user a quick look at operating conditions or over-pressurising that has occurred.

Figure 4: Images for easy troubleshooting.

Specialised Pressure Transmitters Today, not only do many transmitters have better internal diagnostics, they have advanced diagnostics that can detect abnormal process situations.

These transmitters utilise high resolution, fast sampling pressure sensors (20 times per sec) to measure the pressure. Small changes in pressure (process noise) are turned in to statistical data such as mean, standard deviation, standard deviation rate of change, and ratios between the two.

The diagnostic baselines the statistical data (process noise signature) and then continuously compares the current statistical data. The user selects the action to be taken if the current data exceeds the user defined limit.

Advanced diagnostics have been available in Foundation fieldbus transmitters for years as they do not have power limitations like HART transmitters. Now some manufacturers have taken advantage of new low power technology to embed advanced diagnostics in 4-20mA HART transmitters.

In either case, Foundation Fieldbus and HART transmitters now have enhanced EDDL to display the 40 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Figure 6: Use of gauges in variable logging.

Given the breadth of transmitters and other field devices throughout process facilities, interoperability is essential for integration and ease of use. EDDL is the key to interoperability in a digital plant architecture as it merges functionality of devices using HART, Foundation fieldbus, or Wireless HART into the same single software structure so they can be managed together from a single dashboard.

Although the transmitter manufacturer controls what information is made available from the transmitter and how it is laid out on the screen, the look & feel details such as the appearance of buttons as well as activation of the help, printing, acceptances of changes, and comparison is handled by the device management software ensuring all devices work consistently regardless of manufacturer, type, or protocol.

ENQUIRY NO. 3401

ENQUIRY NO. 746

sector spotlight

The energy industry has to face up to the prospect of renewable energy as a basis for mainstream power generation. By Marcus Syn

Power Generation:

A Planet Of Possibilities otal global energy consumption in the world today is in excess of 350 quadrillion British thermal units (BTUs) per year. This is equivalent to more than 170 million barrels of oil per day.

Where does all this energy come from? Approximately 44 percent comes from petroleum, 26 percent from natural gas, 25 percent from coal, 2.4 percent from hydroelectric power, 2.2 percent from nuclear power and 0.2 percent from non-hydro renewable energy.

On the whole, most power generation in the world is still reliant on the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel power stations are a major source of air pollution, from poor air quality and acid rain, to global warming. The burning of coal, oil and gas in power stations releases a number of air pollutants, including sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide.

Fortunately, international action aimed at reducing the threat of acid rain and air pollution from power generation has, over the last 20 years, led to a reduction in the amount of pollutants coming from power stations. Fossil fuel power stations however, remain a significant source of carbon dioxide (CO 2), a major greenhouse gas.

Types Of Power Generation Renewable energy effectively uses 42  industrial automation asia | May 2008

natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished.

Renewable energ y technologies range from solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity/micro hydro, biomass and biofuels for transportation.

Climate change concerns coupled with high oil prices, and increasing government support are driving increasing renewable energy legislation, incentives and commercialisation.

European Union leaders reached an agreement in principle in March 2007 that 20 percent of their nations’ energy should be produced from renewable fuels by 2020, as part of its drive to cut emissions of CO2, blamed in part for global warming.

• Solar Power Solar power is used synonymously with solar energy or more specifically to refer to the conversion of sunlight into electricity. This can be done either through the pho-

tovoltaic effect or by heating a transfer fluid to produce steam to run a generator.

Photovoltaics (PV) has been mainly developed for small and medium-sized applications, from the calculator powered by a single solar cell to the PV power plant. For large-scale generation, concentrating solar thermal power plants have been more common but new multi-megawatt PV plants have been built recently.

Solar chemical processes use light (photonic) and heat from the sun to drive chemical reactions.

These processes offset energy that would otherwise be required from an alternate source, produce no pollution, and can serve as reversible method of storing solar energy. Solar chemical technologies are currently at the experimental stage with the primary focus on concentrating solar thermal technologies.

Solar mechanical technologies u s e s u n l i g h t t o p ro d u c e a mechanical effect. These devices generally concentrate sunlight on a boiler to produce steam which is then used by a steam engine to perform useful work.

• Nuclear Power A nuclear reactor uses Uranium rods as fuel, and the heat is generated by nuclear fission.

Modern nuclear power stations use the same type of turbines and generators as conventional power stations.

N u c l e a r p o w e r d o e s n o t produce smoke or CO2, so it does not contribute to the greenhouse effect. Furthermore, huge amounts of energy can be produced from small amounts of fuel and produces small amounts of waste.

Although not much waste is produced, it must be sealed up and buried for many years to allow the

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sector spotlight radioactivity to die away. Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety.

• Wind Power Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. In windmills, wind energy is directly used to crush grain or to pump water. At the end of 2007, worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators was 94.1 gigawatts. The key advantage of wind power is the fact that it is free, thus wind farms need no fuel.

Moreover, it produces no waste or greenhouse gases and is a good method of supplying energy to remote areas. However, the wind is not always predictable. Suitable areas for wind farms are often near the coast. However, this is where land is usually more expensive.

• Fossil Fuels Fossil fuels include coal, oil and gas because they have been formed from the organic remains of prehistoric plants and animals.

Crude oil (called ‘petroleum’) is easier to get out of the ground than coal, as it can flow along pipes. This also makes it cheaper to transport.

Natural gas is easy to transport along pipes, and gas power stations produce comparatively little pollution. Other fossil fuels are being investigated, such as bituminous sands and oil shale.

• Hydropower Hydropower or hydraulic power is the force or energy of moving water and can produce a great deal of power very cheaply. Once a dam is built, the energy is virtually free. There is no waste or pollution produced and is much more reliable than wind, solar or wave power.

Water can be stored above the dam ready to cope with peaks in demand. Besides, hydro-electric power stations can increase to full power very quickly, unlike other power stations. Electricity can also 44 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety.

be generated constantly.

Ti d a l s t re a m p o w e r i s a relatively new technology. Tidal stream generators draw energy from currents in much the same way that wind generators do. The higher density of water means that a single generator can provide significant power.

• Geothermal Energy Geothermal energy is an important resource in volcanically active places. Water is pumped down an ‘injection well’, filters through the cracks in the rocks in the hot region, and comes back up the ‘recovery well’ under pressure. It ‘flashes’ into steam when it reaches the surface. The steam may be used to drive a turbogenerator, or passed through a heat exchanger to heat water to warm houses.

• Biomass Most commonly, biomass refers to plant matter grown for use as biofuel, but it also includes plant or animal matter used for production of fibres, chemicals or heat. Biomass may also include biodegradable wastes that can be burnt as fuel.

The advantages of generating power through biomass includes the fact that it utilises waste materials, so it makes ecnonomical sense, as these fuel materials tend to be cheap. However, collecting the waste in sufficient quantities can be difficult. Besides, the

burning of these materials will also produce greenhouse gases.

The Future Environmental factors such as global warming and pollution will continue to challenge the fact that most of today’s power is generated through fossil fuel combustion. There are concerns about fossil fuel burning technologies and their greenhouse gas emissions.

Improved plant efficiencies and coal gasification with CO2 sequestering can significantly reduce the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere per kilowatt hour of electricity generated, but with incremental costs.

The Kyoto Protocol, which will require most developed nations including the USA and the EU to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide by 2010, will lead to an upsurge in the use of renewable sources of energy. The EU has already proposed generating 22.5 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2010.

Renewable technologies have developed to the stage where the best can now compete with traditional generation technologies. Further developments, which are taking place now, will see them gaining significant market share during the next 10 years, especially for the major forms of renewable power generation. However, cost remains the key issue defining the viability of any power generation technology.

ENQUIRY NO. 3402

Market Report:

World Biofuel Demand To Rise The world demand for biofuels is predicted to grow at a rate of 20 percent annually to 92 million metric tonnes in 2011. By Ned Zimmerman, analyst, The Freedonia Group orld demand for biofuels will expand at a nearly 20 percent annual pace to 92 million metric tonnes in 2011, despite recent concerns about the impact of biofuels on the environment and world food supplies.

Market expansion will come from a more than doubling of the world market for bioethanol, and even faster increases in global biodiesel demand. Other biofuels will also experience strong growth, though much slower than either biodiesel or bioethanol.

On a regional basis, growth will be driven by a rapid expansion of the biofuel market in North America, particularly for bioethanol. The Asia Pacific region and Western Europe will experience even faster advances, although absolute gains will trail the larger North American market.

Similarly, increases in the small Africa Mideast and Eastern

World Biofuel Demand By Type, 2006 (37.7 million metric tonnes) Other Biofuels 3.1% Bioethanol 80.9%

Biodiesel 16.0%

The world market for biofuels has expanded rapidly in recent years as a combination of domestic politics, rising oil prices, increasing concerns about global warming, and potential economic opportunity have spurred a broad range of countries to pass laws that support biofuel industries.

World bioethanol demand has benefited from a powerful farm lobby in the United States, as well

World Biofuel Demand (million metric tonnes)

Item Biofuel Demand North America Western Europe Asia/Pacific Other Regions

2001

2006

2011

15.20 5.56 1.23 0.01 8.40

37.70 17.74 6.51 1.95 11.50

92.00 45.00 17.70 8.85 20.45

Europe markets will be well above average. Growth in Latin America will be modest, a consequence of Brazil’s already sizable market for bioethanol.

% Annual Growth 2001-2006 2006-2011 19.9 26.1 39.6 187.1 6.5

19.5 20.5 22.1 35.3 12.2

as rising oil prices that have increased bioethanol demand in Brazil. Growing concerns about global warming have helped raise both bioethanol and

biodiesel demand in the European Union, while several countries in the Asia Pacific region have instituted biofuel programs as a means of boosting their local economies.

World biofuel production will track increases in demand as most countries seek to foster domestic biofuel industries, both to reduce reliance upon imported oil and to spur domestic economic development.

This will continue to favour the development of cereal-based (maize and wheat) bioethanol capacity in North America and Western Europe, as well as sugarcane-based bioethanol production in Latin America.

Likewise, biodiesel production will centre on soybean oil in the Americas, rapeseed oil in Europe, and palm (and increasingly jatropha) oil in the Asia Pacific region. Nextgeneration cellulosic bioethanol and algal biodiesel technologies will become commercially significant in the longer term.

ENQUIRY NO. 3403

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 45

IN business

BSK, Indonesia

Entrepreneurial Impetus:

Starting

Scratch From

Beyond just raising and spending money, starting a company takes planning and dedication, and most of all teamwork. By Jim Pinto

any technology startups are founded by engineers. But, they seem to quickly run out of steam if there is no management team – including marketing, sales and finance. Successful companies have a good balance of innovation, planning, drive and experience.

46 industrial automation asia | May 2008

The design of products, especially those manufactured in high volume, entails a host of details that must be integrated. And so, engineering companies are usually narrowly focused, trusting in the old adage, ‘Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door!’

Engineering Unbalance Engineer founders are notorious for becoming so enamoured by their products, that they keep developing increasingly better features, without first selling the more-than-adequate initial products. It’s called ‘creeping elegance’. I know; I used to practice it. I’m an engineer, so I write from experience.

As an angel investor, I have seen small engineering companies go off the cliff into bankruptcy, simply because the founder was spending all the money on tweaking the product, rather than selling it. And it’s usually a product that the engineer ‘thinks’ the customer should have, not what customers have actually asked for.

The company publishes an expensive brochure, which describes in great detail all the wonderful features – in language that most customers don’t even understand.

I have seen too many software company founders give me long demonstrations, from which it is hard to escape. Clearly this guy developed the software and knows how to hit

Control-C, Alt-N and Shift-G when needed. And, if I didn’t make excuses to exit, the demo would have lasted a long time, treating me to endless, ‘amazing’ features.

Good products must include only the features that customers want, not endless tweaks that delight the engineer and confuse everyone else.

Marketing & Sales This is where good marketing comes in – finding customers, and filling their needs. It’s important to have things that have been specifically requested by customers – not just features that are imagined by engineers. Good marketers keep examining the FABS – features, advantages, benefits.

• F e a t u r e s : S p e c i f i c a t i o n s , characteristics, size, shape, packaging, etc.

• Advantages: Improvements over alternative ways of doing the same function. This requires a thorough

competitive analysis of all FABS. • Benefits: In consumer markets style and fashion may be benefits.

But, in the business world there is only one central benefit – saving money. That does not mean just product price. Benefits include features and advantages that save money over other ways of doing the same functions.

Good marketing recognises that features and advantages that provide no benefit should not be included as ‘standard features’. They might be included as options, at additional cost; let the customer decide whether it’s an additional benefit.

Next, equally important, is sales – approaching target customers and convincing them to buy the product over many other choices. Good marketing is relatively useless without sales drive. Marketing may identify the type of customer – sales has to find the customer, demonstrate the products,

overcome objections and book sales.

And that’s not easy – a sale is not a sale till the customer is satisfied, pays the invoice and buys again.

Good sales people use the FABS to sell. Not-so-good sales techniques include negative selling – called FUDS: • Fear: Inserting false urgency – “Without this product, you’ll be falling behind.” “Buy now or you’ll lose the discount.”

• Uncer tainty: Bringing up FABS that are beyond the customers understanding.

• Doubt: Criticising the competitor’s FABS; giving the customer negative feelings about not buying.

Just a touch of FUDS may be in order, before losing a customer. It’s fine to show product comparisons against competitive products, but it must be factual. Outright negative selling makes customers uncomfortable.

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Association of Process Industry (ASPRI) Tel: 65 6560 5051 Fax: 65 6560 9692 Email: processcem2008@aspri.com.sg MP Asia Pte Ltd Tel: 65 6393 0237 Fax: 65 6296 2670 Email: info@processcemasia.com

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 47

IN business Good salesmanship should clearly understand the difference.

Total Concept Engineering To be successful, good companies must plan all aspects of the business.

These include a good understanding of the market requirements, plus manufacturing, quality, sales and distribution needs, all leading to competitive pricing with good profit margins. This is what I call ‘total concept engineering’.

Before I started my company, Action Instruments, I remember asking Bill Hewlett the engineerfounder of Hewlett Packard for his business advice as an engineer. Said Mr Hewlett: “Always understand the numbers. If you don’t measure, you can’t control!” That was three decades ago, but it’s still the best advice I’ve ever received.

John Fluke (founder of the instrument company Fluke, now part of Danaher) also felt that it takes more than just good engineering to develop good products: “Good people make good products which make a good profit.” The product has to sell (customers have to need it and buy it) at a good price (customers must prefer it over other alternatives), at good profit margins (produced at sufficiently low cost), with good quality. He was telling me to practice ‘total concept engineering’.

Balanced Teamwork When I invest in a startup, the first thing I ask is – where is the team? I look for a balance between all the key functions. If there is no team, I quickly look for an exit. If there is a team, I look for teamwork – people that complement each other, and are not dominated by one function to the detriment of the others.

If the founder is an engineer, I quickly turn my attention to the marketing chief and ask: “Who needs this?” I look for a reasonable analysis of the markets and competitors.

Is the market big enough or just a small, specialised niche with limited potential? There must be a sensible view of market-size and growth48 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Leaders must have the ability to inspire and motivate people to do their best.

rate. And I look for a dynamic and enthusiastic sales driver who has broad experience with generating bookings.

What about the product price?

If it’s the cheapest, I get suspicious.

Often the pricing is artificially set to be lower than anyone else – which is not reasonable. I look for the real advantages, to find out whether customers would buy this product even if it was twice the price.

And then I look for some financial savvy. Up to date measurements are important. In an engineering startup, the financial person can be part-time; a good CFO can come later, when strong growth is under way. I look for the books to be kept up to date, not months behind. The founding team should have the ability to execute for the first few years – that’s when most startups fail.

Develop A Winning Culture As the company grows, you must find and develop people who are motivated to work with you to accomplish the objectives. To motivate employees to put in their best efforts, good companies must offer things beyond just competitive pay – respect, encouragement, appreciation and reward. Getting the best out of people is the hallmark of good companies.

The days of the ‘boss’ and slavedriver are long gone; intimidation achieves very little beyond immediate acceptance by timid followers, or angry rejection by good workers.

People who are yelled at may go back

Sanja Gjenero, Zagreb, Croatia

to do the job correctly, but it’s never their best effort. Leaders of good companies have the ability to inspire and motivate people to do their best.

Have Fun & Make Money Good businesses are distinguished by social and ethical balance, beyond just growth and profits. They take the longterm view – expecting all employees (executives, managers and workers alike) to give some of their time and talent to external good causes.

They truly ‘win’ when they have contributed not only to the owners or shareholders, but also to employees and their families, and to the community. In turn, this attracts good people with similar values and helps them to relate and contribute to the balanced objectives. That becomes the company culture, or ‘ethos’.

About The Author Jim Pinto is an industr y analyst and commentator, writer, technology futurist, angel investor. You can email him at: jim@jimpinto.com. Or review his prognostications and predictions on his website: http://www.jimpinto.com. Review the contents of his book ‘Pinto’s Points – How to Win in the Automation Business’ at http://jimpinto.com/writings/points.html.

ENQUIRY NO. 3501

Rockwell plans to focus on the verticals Life Sciences and Oil And Gas. This includes addressing the generic process industry and the expansion of the safety business.

By Derek Rodriguez

Vertical Dreams W ith the recent acquisitions o f I C S Tr ip l e x , Pav i l i o n Technologies and Cedes AG, Rockwell Automation is the market leader in the combined machine and process safety markets, which is worth in excess of US$3 billion.

In this interview with IAA, CEO Keith Nosbusch, together with David Johnson, VP and GM, and Ajay Kumar, regional director of South Asia, speak about the reasons behind the acquisitions and the plans the company has for the Asian market.

IAA: How will the recent acquisitions affect your markets in Asia?

KN: If you look at ICS Triplex, there we will be able to expand our business in the process industry, particularly

in Oil And Gas, which is key in many parts of Asia Pacific.

Similarly, Pavilion Technologies is a company that’s involved in advanced process control, and that also helps us to expand our footprint in the process industry.

Where we were the weakest was in light curtains and Cedes helps bridge a very significant gap in light curtains, machine guarding if you will, and that now gives us a much better position because that is the largest single segment of machine safety.

We believe that Asia is an area where process safety is very important.

As more companies particularly OEMs are exporting machines to around the world they have to comply to the global safety directives, and so we

think that Cedes will help us do that for a lot of the OEM manufacturers.

IAA: Do you have any plans to set up factories in Asia in the next 12 months?

KN: There won’t be new facilities but we will occupy more of the facilities with more lines, more products being manufactured and more capabilities in each one of those existing facilities.

That’s the goa l for the nex t 18 months.

IAA: You are expanding the capabilities, does that mean that you are expanding the output from these plants?

DJ: Yes. We had a three year plan. We are finishing the initial scope, that’s called the distributed IO business, and May 2008 | industrial automation asia 49

IN business we will finish that in June. And then we will start to evaluate what’s next.

IAA: Is there anything that you will like to concentrate on after that?

DJ: Probably just the same two goals. We had two p a ra l l e l g o a l s i n the beginning; one w a s to e s t a b l i sh our presence. We David Johnson have followed through on that and we now have several businesses that have their global centre for business strategy, marketing, operations, engineering all in Singapore.

Equally important is learning more about the Asia Pacific region; specifically about what the customers in these growing segments require and need that might be different to our historic understanding and then building those capabilities into future products.

IAA: How is the Asian market doing so far? Is it up to your expectations?

KN: Yes, Asia is performing to our expectations. We struggled about six quarters ago, particularly in China.

We have improved our capabilities in China. They have continued to get better quarter after quarter, and our goal continues to be 20 percent growth in China.

IAA: Is Asia more important to you because of the financial problems in the American market?

KN: Asia’s always important because of the evolution of manufacturing in this region. It is where we will see higher g row th for the nex t couple of years so that’s the reason I’m here (in Singapore), and that’s the reason we’re making investments in the Asia Pacific business centre in Singapore that Dave’s responsible for.

Our strategy is to be able to grow our business outside the US at a faster rate and we have to become better positioned in Asia, stronger in Asia, and that’s independent of what happens in the US economy.

IAA: Ever since the acquisitions, have there been more of these products in the Asian market?

AK: The acquisitions a re ma k ing a big difference helping us enter new accounts. Look at ICS Triplex and Ajay Kumar South East Asia for instance. Between 25–30 percent of the business is in Oil And Gas. And in that sector, having ICS Triplex really brings us to a different level by helping us enter new accounts and new applications.

IAA: Is there any other domain that you would like to look at?

KN: We want to make sure we have enough domain expertise in the different geographies to support customers wherever they are so you may see us make an acquisition in Life Sciences in another geography so that we can help customers locally.

Likewise, we are looking at more acquisitions within the software arena in the services space, areas that fill out our portfolio.

IA A: W hat are your marketing strategies for Asia for 2008?

KN: The strategies tend to be continued execution of some of the global strategies that we have, although specifically targeted for Asia. For example, marketing strategies continue to expand our capabilities with the integrated architecture. That’s probably our greatest marketing focus and strategy at this point and time.

What is very important to us is the expansion of our ability to address the OEMs in Asia with compact machine solutions which is a portfolio of a bundle of our products that we think provide a better solution for OEM

Life Science and Oil And Gas are much stronger today than three years ago because of acquisitions.

We have set a target that our emerging markets in Asia, which includes China, India and South East Asia, they have to grow at a minimum of 20 percent a year. That’s our goal and we keep our chin up each quarter and we’re on track to get back to that by the end of the year. Overall in Asia, we want to be growing at 15 percent a year so that’s our target as well.

50 industrial automation asia | May 2008

IAA: Are there opportunities for more acquisitions?

KN: We are constantly are looking for acquisitions and our last couple I think positioned us stronger into the process industry but we look in many different dimensions.

We look at how we can be stronger in the verticals, seen as how we spend money in acquisitions that have positioned us to Asia.

Keith Nosbusch, CEO

accounts. So growing OEMs is one of our marketing strategies.

We have a number of key verticals that we’re focused on. The verticals being Life Sciences and Oil And Gas, Food And Beverage, addressing the generic process industry and expansion of safety so those tend to be our greatest initiatives in marketing activities in Asia in 2008.

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design focus

Best Practices:

Not A

Standard Procedure Best practices require a firm commitment in goal setting and understanding the manufacturing processes.

By Mogan Swamy

T

he wide range of companies in an industry and their disparate manufacturing processes contribute to the dichotomy that no single best practice is conceivable for all production facilities.

But there may be certain shared best practices, which can exist in general in an industry, but the methods used by any one manufacturer may be so specialised and proprietary that these best practices might even be considered intellectual property.

In this sense, it must be emphasised that when standards conflict, best practices in a market can be fragmented.

This can inhibit the growth of a company or an industry and severely limit the potential of an economy.

Therefore, to overcome the shortcomings of conflicting expectations and requirements, the mantle of standards coordinator would be best served by a neutral third-party organisation, which can mediate effectively and is fair to all, suppliers, end-users and industry participants alike.

52  industrial automation asia | May 2008

In this respect, for industrial automation, the organisation of choice for most industry practitioners has been the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA). It has developed consensus standards for automation, security, safety, batch control, control valves, field-bus, environmental conditions, measurement and symbols, and is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

An Inclusive System Standards and best practices need to be a ll - inclusive. This mea ns that companies must define best practice s a nd set sta nda rds at all levels.

When buying control systems and equipment, the manufacturer should have connectivity clearly in mind, and make sure that whatever the business buys can be easily set up to work with a management system, which also automates the record-keeping process.

Whatever that can be measured can be controlled. But this would require that real-time plant floor data, along with bottom line output or sales data, be made available throughout the organisation.

This would then enable the implementation of best practices from the ground up, from how operators run machines to the use of HMI and SCADA systems, and right up to the enterprise level.

The systems and equipment used in the business, both hardware and software, should encapsulate best practices. They should also continuously foster improvement, and be simple enough for operators to use, but challenge them to greater productivity.

Interestingly, this challenge has been taken up by the food and beverage industry, where point-source FDA-compliant solutions have been embedded in equipment that is used at critical control points along the production line.

Meeting Compliance Standards compliant software in such equipment can produce records that can enable manufacturers to quickly narrow down an output run, which are not meeting the specifications, thus not only satisfying FDA rules, but also preventing waste and potential recall of an unaffected product run.

Moreover, if the manufacturer decides to expand his processes and add more equipment along the production line, the best practice would be to have point source software compliant solutions on the new equipment.

This would then enable the data outputs from all the equipment to be tied together via serial connections or an Ethernet LAN, into a computer with additional software that allows for analysis or record keeping, according to government regulations, such as that of the FDA. In addition to these, newer device technologies, which have incorporated

open source technologies in their design and development, are providing the feedback necessary to get useful data more easily and cheaply, to monitor the machines on the factory floor.

The future may not be very far off when operating plants establish best practices for handling such seemingly mundane tasks as putting new roll stock on machines, just to meet standards on its output.

The intent, however, is to support traceability and manage programme changes, which simplifies validation.

The inspection systems at the critical control points on the production line should not be considered as just another point-source application.

Best practice makes it imperative that the inspection systems are tied into a central data management system; the tracking of batch runs and their production events today are just as important as the inspection system itself.

Best Way To Interface An automated system in a business sets a standard for best practice, by providing information that empowers operators to act on, to improve performance and productivity. This means that the right people at the appropriate time must have access to their specific real-time information needs.

B u t t h e d i s p a r a t e s o f t w a re packages, such as manufacturing execution systems (MES), automation and distributed control systems (DCS), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that are suppose to enable this needs, provides information that are less than ideal.

For example, the interactions between enterprise and control activities can be quite complex when different production models are considered. These production models can generally be classified under three categories: ‘Make to Stock’, ‘Make to Order’ and ‘Engineer to Order’.

Engineers Shape The Sustainable Future

Centara Grand at Central World & Bangkok Convention Centre, Bangkok, Thailand 18th - 19th June 2008

WEC is the amalgamation of 6 cutting edge conferences and 4 advanced training programmes running parallel with an international exhibition under one roof that is freely accessible by all delegates over two days Trainings

• 6th Annual Shutdowns & Turnarounds • Plant Reliability Management 2008 • Electrical Engineering and Maintenance Forum • Plant Start-up & Commissioning • Upstream Oil & Gas • 2nd Annual Property & Facilities Management

• Advanced Project Management for Engineers • HAZOP • Turbine Maintenance • Finance for Engineers

William Van Horne The ultimate platform for engineering and maintenance professionals with opportunities to benchmark, network and gain exposure to the latest engineering trends

Highlighted Conference of World Engineering Congress Plant Reliability Management 2008 The prime responsibility of managing reliability has often been given to the maintenance department or reliability engineers.

However, focusing on only an equipment or mechanical perspective can lead to thinking in terms of hardware performance and can minimize the overall impact of reliability management. In Plant Reliability Management 2008, we will be connecting maintenance to two other primary functional components in a plant that influence reliability - operations and plant/equipment design. Creating a synergy between maintenance, operations and design will enable you to drive overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), cost management and ultimately, Return on Net Assets (RONA). Coupling this synergy with strategic business goals and decisions will enable you to achieve a unified approach to your company’s business and competitive performance.

Join us to discover how Plant Reliability Management can be the unifying factor to customer, investor and staff satisfaction, and enable you to achieve a world-class plant performance.

Media Partner

Special REBATES for IAA’s members/subscribers. Contact Ms. Kelly Lee NOW to be part of any conferences or trainings for World Engineering Congress (2 day conference cum exhibition) at Tel: +603 2723 6748 or Email: KellyL@marcusevanskl.com. www.marcusevans.com

ENQUIRY NO. 769

Conferences

“NOTHING IS TOO SMALL TO KNOW, AND NOTHING IS TOO BIG TO ATTEMPT.”

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 53

design focus

The best practices for dealing with cabling and the health and integrity of instrumentation loops, have been stipulated in various industry standards.

Production Models ERP software may be appropriate for the first two, but falls short in the last category. ERP is good at making business decisions but may not be fine-tuned for manufacturing execution or shop-floor operations.

From an integration point of view, the last model, the ‘Engineer to Order’ is probably the most demanding. MES and DCS are widely used for this, and require direct shop floor experience such as in food, pharmaceuticals or chemicals, where best practices are a must.

In all these cases, information exchange is usually synchronous and more in near time. Products are designed and engineered to drive the planning, but these definitions could change during execution.

Moreover, in ‘Engineer to Order’, change requests might be sent back to engineering or planning, which may put the execution phase on hold, while it awaits for the changes to be reflected in the planning stage.

When this is done, a new set of operations or a variation on the production route, such as the requirement of added inspections, will be communicated to the shop floor to complete the work orders.

But an essential feature of standards and best practices is interoperability, and the key to making this happen is software that integrates all the different kinds of systems. However, the design of the ERP software is such 54 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Reliable wireless communication may present a challenge in factory environments.

that there is a distinct possibility of time lags in information transfers from the MES or DCS. Hence, as part of best practices, a real-time statistical process control (SPC) system looks at the process as it proceeds. SPC provides answers to variations in the process, but it must be part of the MES automation solution to be effective. Caution, however, must be exercised in the physical logistics of implementing the SPC, because almost always the manufacturing process will lie between an ‘all manual’ and ‘fully automatic’ system.

For example, sometimes a product may need to be manually handled or inspected at certain intervals along the production line. Of course, ideally, these could be tied into the entire system, and prompt the operator to perform specific tasks, but the costs of implementing such a system can be prohibitive.

It must be emphasised that a key benefit of MES is its ability to identify quality failures so that they can be isolated at the moment the failure occurs. This is an important compliancy factor of the Bioterrorism (USA) Act and all MES for any particular industry are usually packaged specifically with this intended application.

It is not a generalised package like the ERP software. This, therefore, precludes a business from changing the way it conducts its best practices to suit an ERP solution.

Notwithstanding the problems, ISA has promulgated standards that can be applied to a usable eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based infrastructure, data mappings, description of schema choices to support extensions and a broad range of transactions between MES and ERP systems. This is to avoid variants in the implementations of MES and ERP packages, which can lead to interoperability issues.

A Good Thing In increasingly open and connected networks, mission critical systems such as those used in the control of power generation, oil production, water treatment, and transportation, are becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks that penetrate or bypass perimeter defences.

In such a case, the concept of best practice requires a secure design that involves implementing multiple layers of security measures to control access to mission-critical systems and networks. These are necessary to prevent unauthorised access to organisational networks, such as a plant network where target systems may reside.

Measures such as separation of wireless and wired network segments, strong device and user authentication methods, filtering of traffic based on addresses and protocols, securing endpoints or stations from unauthorised access, and monitoring and intrusion

detection on the wireless and wired segments, are examples of multiple layers of defence that can be employed to achieve a defence-in-depth design.

M o r e o v e r, c o n s i d e r a t i o n should also be given to the types of applications in industrial environments. For example, radio frequency transmission quality and reliability are affected by many factors in the operating environment, many of which are dynamic in nature.

Electro-magnetic interference from factory or process machinery can also cause degradation of device performance, and objects in the path of the receiver can cause deflections resulting in attenuated multi-path reception issues.

In factory environments with an abundance of machinery and metal objects that are static and dynamic in nature such as conveyors and cranes, reliable wireless communication may present a challenge, especially for lowpower network devices.

Therefore, the health and effectiveness of any plant’s automation system relies on many factors.

Best practices, therefore, can include the proper selection of automation systems, seamless integration, control schemes, control system installation, and last but not least, proper electrical installation and connectivity of field instrumentation devices.

The last factor, which glues the entire automation system together, involves cabling, grounding, cable routing, and mitigation of external influences such as noise and interference. The best practices for dealing with these cabling and the health, and integrity of instrumentation loops, have been stipulated in various industry standards.

In Summary Best practices facilitate continuous improvement in the company and help it to reduce costs, operate more

efficiently and improve compliance to customer requirements.

Best practices begin with good engineering practices and good manufacturing practices as described by neutral third-party organisations such as the FDA or ISO. The standards and regulations promulgated by these organisations can provide a good yardstick for manufacturers to determine what they need to do to achieve an industrial standard.

However, best practices can only come about with the involvement of key personnel in the plant and enterprise. This will require a firm commitment in goal setting and understanding the manufacturing processes, and not using automation to set standards for best practices.

Only with this knowledge to apply the correct automation strategy, to work with a company’s best practices strategy, will keep the company competitive.

ENQUIRY NO. 0000

Engineers Shape The Sustainable Future

Centara Grand at Central World & Bangkok Convention Centre, Bangkok, Thailand 18th - 19th June 2008

WEC is the amalgamation of 6 cutting edge conferences and 4 advanced training programmes running parallel with an international exhibition under one roof that is freely accessible by all delegates over two days Trainings

• 6th Annual Shutdowns & Turnarounds • Plant Reliability Management 2008 • Electrical Engineering and Maintenance Forum • Plant Start-up & Commissioning • Upstream Oil & Gas • 2nd Annual Property & Facilities Management

• Advanced Project Management for Engineers • HAZOP • Turbine Maintenance • Finance for Engineers

William Van Horne The ultimate platform for engineering and maintenance professionals with opportunities to benchmark, network and gain exposure to the latest engineering trends

Highlighted Conference of World Engineering Congress 6th Annual Plant Shutdowns & Turnarounds Planning and managing shutdowns, turnarounds and outages in the process and manufacturing plant environment is a complex and demanding function. If turnarounds are not properly planned, managed and controlled, companies run the risks of serious budget overruns, costly schedule delays and negative impacts on customers.

As the plant shutdown is the major component of plant downtime and maintenance costs, proper plant turnaround management will have a significant impact on the bottom line. In that bottom line, many plant operators are still looking into ways of reducing costs via improved and successful shutdown & turnaround planning processes.

Attend this highly focused conference and transform strategies to become more effective. See your returns in the form of improved returns from using the right strategies in gaining excellent world-class plant shutdown and turnaround. Do not miss out 6th Annual Plant Shutdowns & Turnarounds in Bangkok and ultimately become the leader in your industry.

Media Partner

Special REBATES for IAA’s members/subscribers. Contact Ms. Kelly Lee NOW to be part of any conferences or trainings for World Engineering Congress (2 day conference cum exhibition) at Tel: +603 2723 6748 or Email: KellyL@marcusevanskl.com. www.marcusevans.com

ENQUIRY NO. 770

Conferences

“NOTHING IS TOO SMALL TO KNOW, AND NOTHING IS TOO BIG TO ATTEMPT.”

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 55

products & Services Advantech: Wireless Serial Device Servers

Beckhoff: Pressure Measuring Terminal

Advantech’s WLAN enabled wireless serial device servers, the EKI-1351 and EKI-1352 combine rugged, compact and fast 1 or 2 RS-232/422/485 ports with support for the new 802.11b, and 802.11g protocols. Each COM port features throughput of up to 1.2Mbps with 921K-baud technology.

They also have built-in dual-power inputs (12~48VDC) with one power fail relay to detect operation status and ensure the device works normally.

TCP ser ver/client a nd U DP mode a llow simultaneous connection with up to five hosts through the RS -232/422/485 serial ports for advanced data transmission and communication, such as broadcast and polling operations.

B e c k h o f f ’s pressure measuring terminals K M 3 7 01, K M 370 2 , and K M3712 ca n record differentia l and absolute pressures.

Pressure measurement is carried out using a bus terminal with a width of 24 mm. The compact housing and simple connection system support a space-saving and rapid installation.

This 16-bit value is available to the higher level controller independent of the fieldbus.

The pressure measuring terminals have quick release mechanisms for connecting the measuring hoses.

Enquiry no. 3601

Enquiry no. 3603

Amphenol: Ethernet Connector

Burkert: Universal Controller

Amphenol Socapex’s RJF range of Ethernet connectors’ steel shells provides 10 g v ibrat ion resistance (at 10 – 500 Hz, 3-axis) and IK06 impact resistance.

Acceptable tension on the RJ45 lead in the plug is up to 100 N along the axis, and the minimum number of mating cycles is 500.

It has an IP67 sealing rating and offers 48 h salt spray resistance with nickel-plating finish and 96 h with black electrophoretic treatment, rising to longer than 500 h for the anodic oxidation and cadmium-plated version. UL 94 V0 is fire resistant and can withstand 21 days at 43°C (98 percent humidity).

Burkert’s universal 8611 controller is designed for compact control system applications. It is compatible with a wide range of proportional control valves and co n ne c t s w it h a n electropneumatic servosystem for pneumatically actuated process control valves.

The Proportional & Integral (PI) process controller is equipped with additional functions.

The actual process value can be supplied as one of three inputs; a standard current (4-20 mA), frequency or Pt100 sig nal directly to the universal controller.

Enquiry no. 3602

56 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Enquiry no. 3604

products & Services

Carlo Gavazzi: Energy Meter

Huba Control: Pressure Transmitter

Carlo Gavazzi Automat ion’s t h re e pha se energ y meter, E M21-72D, ha s a detachable display that allows configuring the instrument for panel (72x72mm) or DINrail mounting, either as an energy meter or a transducer.

It can be used for both Building Management System (BMS) and cost allocation applications.

The energy meter has an application-oriented programming procedure and a wrong phasesequence warning. It is based on a detachable, connector-less and battery-less display.

It offers three and selectable set of variables to be displayed. Moreover, all the electrical parameters of the installation can be immediately available, via the RS485 port, either to the BMS or to the standard acquisition-monitoring system.

These pressure transmitters type series 515 with a joined cable have a compact and rugged mechanic design which is based on the type series 511 and have a protection standard of IP69K. Pressure ranges up to 600 bar; different standardised output signals as well as various pressure connections offer a multi-purpose use.

This sensor utilises a ceramic technology developed by Huba Control. It possesses a media stop system to prevent media egress when exceeding pressure range.

Testing reveals a spraying angle of 0°, 30°, 60°, and 90°. The distance of duct is from 100 mm to 150 mm. It possesses a spraying quantity of 14 to 16 litres per minute and has a water pressure of 80 to 100 bar with a duration of 30 seconds per position.

Enquiry no. 3605

Enquiry no. 3607

Check Point: Internet Security Solution

ICP DAS: Profibus Remote I/O Unit

A new line of Internet security appliances offering an easy to manage security solution with the best price/performance ratio has been introduced by Check Point Software Technologies.

Power-1 appliances combine firewall, IPSec, virtual private network (VPN) and intrusion prevention with acceleration technologies, delivering a security platform for multi-Gbps environments.

It provides performance up to 14 Gbps firewall throughput and with its 6.1 Gbps intrusion prevention speed, customers now have the ability to stop application layer threats faster. Multiple appliances can be centrally managed with other Check Point security gateways through a single console, simplifying network security management and reducing administrative costs.

The Profi-8455 by ICP DAS provides the Profibus DP communication p ro to co l w it h any DP-Masters.

Ma ny k inds of i-8K and i-87K I/O modules are also provided with it.

It supports hot-swap for modules, and runs auto transmission rate detection. It also passes 3000V DC power isolation protection and 4KV ESD protection for all terminals.

The unit has a maximum transmission rate of 12 Mbps, a maximum 128 bytes input/output data length individually, and a maximum 39 diagnosis channels. It also has a built in host and module dual watchdog timer and four I/O expansion slot interface.

Enquiry no. 3606

Enquiry no. 3608

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 57

products & Services

Ifm: Pressure Sensor

Moxa: Gigabit Ethernet Switch

I f hole patter ns of ‘hydraulic series connections’ are to be used directly for the mounting of ifm’s PY700x series electronic pressure sensor, the sensor can be mounted vertically to the surface using the flange connection to CETOP. The connection to the pressure medium is made using four screws and an inserted O-ring.

The sensor can also be mounted parallel to the surface. Additional pressure connections to the measuring cell (1 x G 1/4, 2 x M6) are available for the connection of the pressure pipe independent of the fixing options.

The M6 screw is also used as a venting option.

Moxa Inc’s has EDS-728 modular Ethernet switch supports up to four Gigabit ports, 24 Fast Ethernet ports, and advanced network control. The EDS-728 is specially designed for redundant Gigabit network backbones and uses a modular configuration to provide flexibility for network expansion.

It also features industrial-grade construction, a console port for automatic configuration backup, and an angled LED troubleshooting panel. The modular design allows the switch to be expanded through interchangeable Gigabit and Fast Ethernet modules with SFP, copper, and fibre optic (SC/ST) connectors.

Enquiry no. 3609

Enquiry no. 3611

Igus: Gigabit Ethernet Cable

N-Tron: Gigabit Ethernet Devices

Igus has a GigE (Gigabit Ethernet) cable, Chainflex CFBUS.044, for continuous dynamic use in energy chains. The oil-resistant GigE cable has been successfully fatigue-tested over 100 metres of travel (50 metre cable length).

This means that igus is now offering FireWire, USB and GigE cables specifically for use in chains.

The cable’s bus pairs are stranded together with a short pitch. The flexible tinned copper shield results in high damping stability even at high cycle rates.

N-Tron’s 1000 Series family of industrial hardened entry level G i ga b it E t he r ne t products combine a two million hour M T B F, op e ra t i n g temperature range of - 4 0 º C to 8 5º C, redunda nt power inputs, shock resistance, ESD protection, and RFI immunity together.

The 1005TX is ideal for applications where multiple Ethernet cameras, wireless access points or other data intensive devices are utilised and an economical unmanaged switch is suitable. The 1003GX2 is a good fit in areas where a copper Gigabit backbone is to be joined to Gigabit fibre backbone.

Enquiry no. 3610

58 industrial automation asia | May 2008

Enquiry no. 3612

products & Services products & Services

National Instruments: USB Digital I/O Device

Tibbo: Industrial Controller

Nationa l Instr uments’ N I USB-6509, a bus-powered, portable, USB digital I/O device has 96 bidirectional digital I/O cha nnels a nd plug-and-play USB connectivity.

The industrial feature set includes programmable power-up states, digital I/O watchdog timers, change detection and programmable input filters.

The device is compatible with transistor– transistor logic (TTL), complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) and 5 V digital logic levels, and each port of eight lines is individually configurable for input or output. The USB-6509 can drive external digital devices such as solid-state relays (SSRs) with current up to 24 mA per line.

The bus-powered device can source up to 215 mA total across all digital output lines. An optional 12 VDC power supply is available.

Tibbo’s BASIC programmable industrial controller, DS1000 has four RS232 serial ports that has baud rates of up to 920 Kbps. (TX, RX, RTS, CTS, DTR, DSR lines.) Its functionality is determined by which Tibbo Basic application it is running. It has a 88 MHz CPU with a 512/1024K onboard flash disk. It also has a 100BaseT Ethernet port.

The contoller’s power supply range is from 9 – 18 V. For its internal firmware, it is upgradeable through the serial port or network. There is an optional secondary waterproof cover besides the extruded profile aluminium body.

Enquiry no. 3613

Enquiry no. 3615

Siemens: HMI Devices

Vega: Level Sensor

The Siemens Division Industry Automation has added a series of HMI devices with allround IP65 protection to the Simatic HMI ( Huma n Machine Interface) range of products. The devices are designed for mounting on a support bracket or on a supporting foot.

The new series is available in three versions: Simatic Flat Panel Monitor Pro is an industrial display monitor which can be installed at a distance of up to 30 metres away from the PC; Simatic Thin Client Pro is especially suitable as a second workstation for terminal and web-client applications; Simatic Multi Panel 377 Pro, a highperformance device that can be expanded when necessary, is intended for use with the Simatic WinAC MP 2007 control software.

The VegaVib is a v ibrating level sw itc h for le ve l detection of bulk solids that operates w ith a v ibrating rod. It offers fault monitoring of up to SIL 2 (according to IEC 61508) and i s av a i l a b l e f o r dust Ex areas of zone 20 (1D or 1/2D depending on the application).

It can be used for applications in large-grained substances. The material can neither deposit on nor jam the rod. The vibrating rod can also be used in the pharmaceutical and food and beverage industry – the polished version can be easily cleaned.

Enquiry no. 3614

Enquiry no. 3616

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 59

EVENT review

RFID World Asia 2008

Safety Control & Instrumentation Systems Conference

he 5th annual RFID World Asia was held in Suntec, Singapore from April 9–11, 2008. In this event, major RFID industry players showcased their latest RFID products and solutions in the sectors of Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Logistics, Aerospace, and Retail.

Together with Cards Asia 2008 and Retail Solutions World Asia, over 250 exhibiting companies gathered to share the latest innovations. Four high level user conferences and three technology seminar presentations were held within the building.

he Safety Control & Instrumentation Systems Conference hosted by IDC Technologies was held in Singapore at the Rendezvous Hotel from March 12–13, 2008, with pre-conference workshops on March 11, 2008.

This conference focused on the technology and application of safety-related control and instrumentation systems in the chemicals, energy, mining and manufacturing industries. The conference provided an opportunity to promote and showcase the presenters’ companies’ vision, knowledge and expertise in the chemicals, mining, manufacturing and utilities industries as they apply to safety.

The conference attracted both national and international speakers and delegates. Speakers who shared their knowledge and expertise included: Tahir Rafique (Qenos Botany Site, Australia), Tino Vande Capelle (HIMA), Bob Weiss (Honeywell, Australia), Prasad CNN (Yokogawa), Kristian Olsson (ABB), Hun Koy Kung (Emerson Process Management), David Ong (Excel Marco/Exida), Dr Issam Mukhtar (Invensys, Australia) and Elliot Skultin (Omron).

March 12 – 13, 2008 Rendezvous Hotel Singapore

ENQUIRY NO. 3701

April 9 – 11, 2008 Suntec Singapore

60 industrial automation asia | May 2008

ENQUIRY NO. 3702

ProPak Vietnam 2008 roPak Vietnam 2008, the 4th international processing and packaging exhibition and conference for Vietnam attracted 6,810 trade professionals from 36 countries during the four day event held at the HIECC, Ho Chi Minh City from March 5 – 8 2008.

The opening of the exhibition and conference was presided over by the vice minister of industry and trade who described the event as “a good opportunity for the producers in the industry to expand cooperation and investment in order to enhance the competitive capacity and quality of their products”.

The number of participants reached 169 companies from 23 countries.

In highest attendance were companies based in Thailand followed by locally based manufacturers and distributors from Vietnam, then from Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, China,

Germany, Malaysia, the UK and the USA. International groups at the event included Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, the UK and Thailand. Representing the UK Pavilion, John Cowdrey of the Processing and Packaging Machinery Association reported: “Both the exhibition and accompanying seminar were a great success for our members.

We see the Vietnamese market as a great opportunity.”

About 93 percent of the trade buyers at the exhibition were Vietnamese, visiting from 50 regions of Vietnam, predominantly from the south.

ProPak Vietnam 2008 was officially supported by nine government and trade industry organisations including the Vietnam Association of Food Science & Technology (VAFoST), the Vietnam Packaging Association, the Vietnam Pharmaceutical Companies Association, the Food & Foodstuffs

Association, the Vietnam Plastics Association and regionally by the Federation of Institutes of Food Science & Technology in ASEAN. Alongside the exhibition was the international conference programme on ‘Functional Food Developments in Vietnam’ which was led by VAFoST included industry specialist speakers from Hanoi, the USA, Thailand and Singapore.

It was attended by over 200 industry delegates. The programme continued with the seminar on ‘Recent Developments on Processing, Packaging a n d L a b o r a t o r y Te c h n o l o g i e s ’ organised by the Processing and Packaging Machinery Association.

March 5 – 8, 2008 HIECC, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam ENQUIRY NO. 3703

May 2008 | industrial automation asia 61

EVENT PREVIEW

ICA & Lab 2008 he 9th International ICA and Lab events will showcase the latest state-of-the-art technological solutions in relation to improvements to process and quality and boosting laboratory performance.

With over 400 par ticipating companies from 25 countries and international groups from Germany, South Korea and Singapore at the event, the ICA Exhibition will be the largest gathering of instrumentation, measurement and automation experts.

Held alongside ICA 2008 is Lab 2008.

June 10 – 13, 2008 KL Convention Centre Malaysia

It offers the perfect platform for the industry to source solutions to attain ultimate accuracy in measurement, test and analysis. Here, visitors and delegates will be the first to view cutting edge technologies displayed by global renowned suppliers.

Based on the growing demand for laboratory instruments and services, some 5,000 trade visitors and delegates are expected at the show.

There will also be a number of new product launches at the ICA/Lab 2008 Exhibitions. The technical presentations

by exhibitors will offer tips on how to improve manufacturing processes, obtain ultimate measurement and quality using advanced technology.

Two conferences will be jointly organised with SIRIM and ICSM where experts and specialists will gather to share in-depth knowledge with delegates. These conferences will give industry players an insight into the latest invention, solutions or innovation in tackling industry-related issues and even techno-businessgovernmental issues.

ENQUIRY NO. 3704

World Engineering Congress 2008 June 18 – 19, 2008 Central World & Bangkok Convention Centre Bangkok, Thailand

he World Engineering Congress (WEC) offers solution providers a platform to meet sales, marketing and business development objectives. This congress is an intersection for engineers across industries to discuss and debate pivotal industry issues.

It is also an arena to showcase business solutions available for enterprises. The engineering profession globally needs to become part of the solution in creating a sustainable future, finding answers with multiple benefits.

The theme for the World Engineering Congress 2008 is ‘Engineers Shape the Sustainable Future’.

Recent research has indicated that job opportunities for engineers will continue to grow over the next decade.

As companies strive to update production and processes to keep pace with the speed and efficiency of modern technology, the skill sets and knowledge of educated engineers will be in increasing demand.

The WEC is the amalgamation of six cutting edge conferences and four advanced training programmes running parallel with an international exhibition under one roof that is freely accessible by all delegates over two days.

ENQUIRY NO. 3705

62 industrial automation asia | May 2008

CalendarOf Events2008 MAY 1 – 5 Robot Taiwan 2008

Taipei WTC Exhibition Hall Taiwan External Trade Development Council Email: robot@taitra.org.tw Web: www.robotaiwan.com

5 – 7 Semicon Singapore 2008

Suntec, Singapore Semi Singapore Pte Ltd Email: ccchan@semi.org Web: www.semiconsingapore.semi.org

7 – 8 Automex Conference 2008

Putra World Trade Center Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Premier Exhibition Services Sdn Bhd Email: info@tradelink.com.my Web: www.automexmalaysia.com/

7 – 11 Metaltech 2008, Malaysia

Putra World Trade Center Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Trade-Link Exhibition Services Email: info@tradelink.com.my Web: www.tradelink.com.my/metaltech/

14 – 18 Intermach 2008

BITEC, Bangkok, Thailand CMP Media (Thailand) Email: intermach@cmpthailand.com Web: www.cmpthailand.com/intermach/

15 Pepperl+Fuchs - Leaders in Technology: Redefining Intrinsic Safety Conference

Orchard Hotel, Singapore Pepperl+Fuchs Pte Ltd Email: pa-info@sg.pepperl-fuchs.com Web: www.pepperl-fuchs.com

26 – 29 Aseanplas 2008

Singapore Expo Messe Düsseldorf Asia Pte Ltd Email: aseanplas@mda.com.sg Web: www.aseanplas-singapore.com

JUNE 4 – 6 Asian Elenex 2008

Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre Hong Kong Exhibition Services Ltd Email: exhibit@hkesallworld.com Web: http://www.asianelenex.com/

4 – 7 Entec Pollutec Asia 2008 & Renewable Energy Asia 2008

BITEC, Bangkok, Thailand CMP Media (Thailand) Email: entech@cmpthailand.com Web: www.thai-exhibition.com/entech/

5 – 8 Manufacturing Hanoi 2008

Hanoi, Vietnam Chan Chao Int’l Co Ltd Email: mis@chanchao.com.tw Web: www.chanchao.com.tw

9 –11 Sensors Expo & Conference Donald E Stephens Convention Centre Rosemount, Illinois, USA Questex Media Group Email: kowen@questex.com Web: www.sensorsexpo.com/

10 – 13 ICA 2008

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Facon Exhibitions Sdn Bhd Email: sales@faconex.com Web: www.faconex.com

11 – 14 Propak Asia 2008, Thailand

Bangkok, Thailand Bangkok Exhibition Services Ltd Email: propak@besallworld.com Web: www.besallworld.com

18 – 19 World Engineering Congress

Bangkok, Thailand Marcus Evans (M) Sdn Bhd Email: kellyl@marcusevanskl.com Web: www.marcusevanskl.com

19 – 22 Assembly Technology 2008

BITEC, Bangkok, Thailand Reed Tradex Email: channipar@reedtradex.co.th Web: www.assemblytechexpo.com

JULY 2 – 4 HVAC Asia 2008

Singapore IIR Exhibitions Pte Ltd Email: hvacasia@iirx.com.sg Web: http://www.hvacrseries.com/asia/

9 – 12 MTA Vietnam 2008

Giang Vo Exhibition Centre (VEFAC) Hanoi, Vietnam Singapore Exhibition Services Email: events@sesallworld.com Web: www.mtavietnam.com

SEPTEMBER 9 – 12 Globaltronics 2008

Suntec, Singapore Reed Exhibitions Email: melanie.mostafa@reedexpo.com.sg Web: www.globaltronics.com.sg

17 – 19 Industrial Automation Vietnam

International Exhibition & Convention Centre (HIECC) Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Hongkong Exhibition Services Ltd Email: exhibit@hkesallworld.com Web: www.iavietnam.com

25 – 28 Automation 2008

Bombay Exhibition Center, India IED Communications Ltd Email: ied@vsnl.com Web: www.automation2008.com

OCTOBER 9 – 11 PSCT 2008

Jinhan Exhibition Centre Guangzhou, China IIR Exhibitions Pte Ltd Email: psct@iirx.com.sg Web: www.iirx.com.sg

13 – 16 SCM Logistics World 2008

Raffles City Convention Center, Singapore Terrapinn Pte Ltd Email: stella.teo@terrapinn.com Web: www.terrapinn.com/2008/scmlog

NOTES To be considered for inclusion in the Calendar of Events, send details of event (name, date, venue, organiser contact) to: The Assistant Editor IAA. Eastern Trade Media Pte Ltd. 1100 Lower Delta Road, EPL Building #04-02, Singapore 169206 Tel: (65) 6379 2888 Fax: (65) 6379 2805 Email: derekrodriguez@epl.com.sg

Mayindustrial 2008 | www.iaasiaonline.com automation asia 63 63

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