Siemens, in partnership with Festo and Lapp Kabel, recently held the annual Cyber Junkyard Competition targeted at organisations and tertiary institutions within the plant, processing and industrial automation sectors across southern Africa. Nine schools took part and it was won by the Durban University of Technology (DUT) followed by Nothlink College (an FET institution from the Western Cape) with North West University (NWU) in third place.
Cyber Junkyard winners – DUT
Heiko Katheder, business unit manager for automation systems at Siemens South Africa explains the concept: “This is an inter-tertiary competition which helps to foster relationships between industry and education. The competition has been taking place for the past eight years and aims to assist skills development in South Africa. In addition, it gives the students taking part a sense of how it feels to work under pressure on a project that must take place within a given timeframe – essentially an idea of what working ‘out there’ is really like.
First runner up – Northlink College
“The theme for this year’s competition was topical on two levels. We wanted to look at something football related, as the timing of the competition closely mirrors the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa. In addition, we wanted to link the theme to energy efficiency.”
Second runner up – NWU
The brief to competitors was to create a football field on which a ball would move from the starting point and negotiate various obstacles before scoring a goal, conserving as much energy as possible in the process. A solar panel was supplied and the objective was to use more solar power than electricity, moving the ball automatically to the goal in the least amount of time.
NMMU – Most Innovative Project
Katheder says that the highlight of the project was the passion of the students and the satisfaction they experience once the project is complete. Indeed, in many cases the Cyber Junkyard competition is used as a platform for potential employees to source promising talent and a number of entrants receive job offers as a result of the competition. Siemens sees the project as a way for the company to contribute to the needs of the engineering industry. “This is a benchmark project for Siemens. We have been involved with it since inception and will continue our involvement for years to come,” Katheder concludes.
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