At a gala dinner marking the final judging of the 2008 Siemens Cyber Junkyard competition as part of the annual Siemens Industry Sector TIA User Forum, it was a clean sweep for South African tertiary institutions. Top honours went to the North West University, closely followed by the Free State’s Central University of Technology and the Durban University of Technology.
The team from Northwest University took first place by impressing the judges with exceptional levels of ingenuity and creativity
From a total of 10 institutions – seven from South Africa and one each from Zambia, Botswana and Namibia, North West University was judged to have best met the project criteria to design and build a hot and cold beverage manufacturing machine incorporating complex elements such as HMI, wireless communication, visualisation, system status monitoring and PLC programming.
“With the proviso that all the equipment provided by Siemens and Festo had to be incorporated in the project, additional specifications included: single and batch order entry and delivery capability; the quality of the end product, consistency and order accuracy; speed of delivery; hygiene and safety,” says Devendree Karuppanan, Cyber Junkyard project manager at Siemens Industry Automation and Drive Technologies.
First prize winners, North West University, received R50 000 worth of Siemens equipment for the University, three weeks training at Siemens Training Center in Midrand for all the team’s students and six Fujitsu Siemens laptops.
Second placed Free State’s Central University of Technology received R30 000 worth of Siemens equipment for the University, two weeks training at Siemens Training Center in Midrand for all the students and six Tom Tom Navigators.
Third place winners, the Durban University of Technology, won R20 000 worth of Siemens equipment for the university, one weeks training at Siemens Training Center in Midrand for all students and six 80 gig Ipods.
With growing levels of enthusiasm year after year from tertiary institutions across southern Africa, the Siemens team is already looking forward to next year’s project says Karuppanan.
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