Increasingly popular among electrical and engineering students and lecturers at tertiary institutions across the SADC, interest in the Siemens Cyber Junk Yard (CJY) competition is at an all-time high. Participation is spurred thanks to the equipment worth millions of Rand on offer to participating teams as well as the exposure to practical, real-world applications.
Applications significantly outnumbered the places available, so much so that the organisers have, for the first time, developed a set of qualifying criteria.
Devendree Karuppanan, Cyber Junk Yard project manager at Siemens Automation & Drives (A&D), says: "We have grown to the point where everyone wants to participate, and while we would like to accommodate everybody, financially and logistically it simply is not possible. Therefore, we took a different approach this year and invited interested parties, as they would do in a real-world situation, to submit a tender document based on a project brief."
Co-sponsored by Siemens A&D, Festo, Siemens Fujitsu, CNBC Africa and Eskom, Cyber Junk Yard's objective is to map a real life application based on industry demand. Participating institutions were invited to respond to a tender enquiry. The tender response was then used to select the final participants.
"Thirteen institutions were finally chosen, of which 10 are from South Africa and one each from Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia."
The successful South African participants are the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Tshwane University of Technology (Witbank Campus), the Tshwane University of Technology (Pretoria Campus), the University Of Johannesburg, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, the University of the Witwatersrand, the Central University of Technology (Free State), North West University and Mangosuthu Technikon. Participants from the SADC region are the Namibian Institute of Mining & Technology, Zimbabwe's National University of Science and Technology, and Zambia's Copperbelt University.
The participants of CJY are required to build a project based on a 'project specification' sent out to each qualifying institution. The technical manager along with the project administrator is responsible for the drawing up of the judging criteria, with the technical managers' focus being the actual project and the usage of the related components.
For Cyber Junk Yard 2007, teams are required to construct and control an efficient yet simplistic pilot plant to demonstrate energy efficient process automation in a simple fluid pumping application. There are special awards for innovation which makes up 25% of the judging criteria.
In addition to the allocation for innovation, competition ranking is based largely on the most persuasive presentation of research into efficiency improvements, TCO and demand-side energy management.
Participating institutions will set up their completed projects as part of the Siemens A&D TIA User Forum at the Birchwood Conference Centre in Johannesburg from 22 to 24 October 2007, where they are on display to the more than 400 delegates attending the annual conference.
For more information contact Keshin Govender, Siemens Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 652 2412, keshin.govender@siemens.com, www.siemens.co.za
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