Contact me for ideas and considerations for protecting your industrial controls network.

Manufacturing Expands At Fastest Pace Since June is a recent article from the Industrial Distribution website that suggests the rate of economic growth in the coming quarters might slow a bit but provides strong evidence that we’re off to a good start in 2012. This article from Textile World also shows that some of manufacturing’s hardest hit sectors of the last decade or so are holding there own and projecting modest growth into next year (Textiles 2012: The Prognosis Is Good).

One of the limiting factors in manufacturers’ ability to grow still appears to be limited access to skilled workers. My post on why there aren’t more young controls engineers touched on some reasons why there is a skilled labor shortage. The bottom line though is those that find work in high-tech manufacturing jobs can be compensated quite well. These posts and links from the US Commerce Department and MFG.com express similar ideas about the struggle to find enough workers and the opportunities for those pursuing manufacturing careers.

 MFG.com – @MFGcom
#Manufacturers lament skilled-labor shortage: http://t.co/AFGE2BHP #manufacturing #jobs #STEM

U.S. Commerce Dept. – @CommerceGov
The State of our Union’s 21st Century Workforce – http://t.co/jd2i34s1 #STEM jobs pay more and have more projected opportunities

Ironically enough there are still numerous nay-sayers that don’t understand the role manufacturing plays. This article from the Fiscal Times, Why America Shouldn’t Focus on Manufacturing contends that there is no hope for US manufacturing and we should be focused on other avenues to prosperity(via @AJSweatt). I disagree.

The gist of the updates is some older versions of RSLogix programming software (5, 500, and 5000) work on Vista and Windows 7 (32 bit). Also a number of software products have been tested and are now supported in XP Mode on Windows 7.

Look for Answer ID 67020 and 341918 on the Rockwell Automation Knowledgebase for more details.

I personally still feel that VMWare is the best way to reduce your headaches in dealing with OS compatibility issues and Rockwell Software.

The wireless connection from electric water heaters to the meter base for instance is still being debated. I assumed that the ZigBee smart energy standard was it. However that isn’t necessarily the case. As a matter of fact there are a number of challenges in those “smart appliance to the meter” and “meters in the housing development to the community” connections that are still being discussed. ZigBee might not be the best solution or at least not the only wireless solution in the system.

Regardless of the standards and technologies, what stuck with me was how big the opportunity is for businesses to grow with the implementation of these systems. It would be a shame if this huge and growing smart grid industry was completely captured by non-US companies. These types of high-tech products are what all of us techies want and the country needs to nurture to provide good jobs in the US.

I’m happy to report that there are some US-based companies that are deeply involved in these standards discussions and technology development. One of my favorites is FreeWave Technologies. FreeWave is a Boulder, Colorado based manufacturer that designs and manufacturers all their products here in the US. If you took a peek inside the drones and other unmanned vehicles that our armed service guys utilize so effectively today, you’d see FreeWave radios. They are the kind of company that you should support if you believe in “Made in America”.

Visit the FreeWave Technologies website to see the types of products and technologies they are making. Also post your comments below or contact me to discuss your opinions on where the smart grid is going and what technologies and automation devices you think will be used in implementing it.

• there is a perception that it’s dirty factory work
• there is a perception that all of these jobs moved overseas
• high school grads lack preparation to pursue engineering degree
• too expensive to pursue engineering degree
• engineers aren’t fairly compensated

There is a long discussion thread in the Automation and Control Engineering Group on LinkedIn on this very topic. This thread started three months ago and is still getting regular comments. The amount of commentary is surprising to me.

A large portion of the comments are not US-based. I don’t know if you can infer this supports a perception that manufacturing left the US. But I can certainly surmise from the comments that more young foreign engineers are outspoken and passionate about automation and controls. They see their biggest obstacle as an inability to get started in the industry and gain some experience.

I did a little research on some of the other topics to satisfy my own curiosity.

The average tuition for a US-based 4-year public university has increased pretty substantially over the past decade. The investment is still valuable if a graduate can find and retain employment.

Electrical Engineers are compensated well. The chart below displays the average compensation for an Electrical Engineer with 10 years experience (taken from the IEEE.org site) compared to the average cost of a gallon of gas and the Consumer Price Index over the same period. I multiplied the cost of gas and CPI by 1,000 to make the graph more compact and to emphasize the trends.

The growth in compensation is somewhat flat over the last ten years but still quite strong compared to most fields. I couldn’t find much historical data specific to the Automation and Control field. The data I did find on the Automation.com site was similar to the average Electrical Engineer compensation.

The fact that Electrical Engineers saw a decrease in compensation growth over the last decade made me curious if that is common across multiple job types and industries. I found that most jobs are similarly flat as far as wage growth goes. There were a few exceptions though such as Chemical Engineers and Petroleum industry jobs. Two other exceptions were also quite noticeable.

U.S Senators maintained a steeper compensation growth trend than Electrical Engineers over the last decade.

The average compensation growth for Fortune 500 CEOs also maintained an impressive trend over the last ten years.

So I say that tuition is an obstacle but not insurmountable and compensation should be viewed as a reason for becoming an engineer. Engineers in the Automation and Controls field are quite handsomely compensated. If you have an opportunity to be a Fortune 500 CEO though, do it instead because you can write yourself an obscene check. While Senators make more than us, I wouldn’t encourage anyone to follow that path because they get less work done than Dilbert’s partner Wally. Most of the people I know with an engineering mindset also like to get things done.

I don’t know the solution to increasing the number of engineers that specialize in the automation and control fields but I’m open to your thoughts.

Panduit offers shielded duct products that provide the noise reduction equivalent of a 6″ air space in the cabinet. Use the shielded duct to separate noisy wiring such as drive cables from communication or signal cabling. Use of the shielded duct products from Panduit also allow a reduction in cabinet size by reducing the amount of air space that is needed.

The products are available as Shielded Wire Duct or as an EMI Noise Shield.

Look through the Minimizing Electrical Noise in Control Panels Presentation for more specific details and recommendations from Rockwell Automation on designing your control panel.