SYNOPSIS

In the present and the future, businesses are going to be automated as they become more complex, critical, with risks associated with failure increasing. However, there is an ‘old school’ of thought that automation systems cannot be depended upon and it must have manual and/or human control systems built-in. This third world mind set operating developing country businesses with developed country objectives needs to be bridged. The only way to effectively implement a new way of doing things is to look at the fundamentals and learn from past experiences, for implementation into future systems.

The automation system covered here range from the Oil & Gas, Utilities, Buildings and other industrial applications. The need for automation is undeniable but so is the need to apply it correctly and exploit it contextually for maximum business benefits. The skills, experience and design that goes into such an endeavour is considerable. This is a one-shot approach that has errors and lost business opportunities running into the millions. Hence, by pooling the past experiences and exploring new possibilities, the probability of making the same ‘mistakes’ are reduced while increasing ‘tailor-made’ customer solutions.


BIODATA OF SPEAKER

A specialist in Electrical, Industrial and Organizational Information automation systems, Vignaeswaran has established his technical expertise in the design and implementation aspects of Distributed Control Systems (DCS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems (SCADA), Substation Control System (SCS), Building Automation Systems (BAS), and has published international papers on them. His interest in information systems and systems automation has led him to present an ‘out of the box’ project approaches paper to the Institution of Engineers, Australia.  

He has a wide range of experiences from Oil & Gas, Building Services and Utility to Mining electrical engineering. He has worked overseas in a USD 3 billion dollar Saudi Arabian King Saud University project. He has always had a passion for cross-discipline applications, automation and advanced information systems. With formal education in Electrical Engineering from Monash University, Australia, 1989, Vignaeswaran had obtained his Masters of Science in Business Information Systems / Information Technology from University of Keele in the UK. His MSc (BIS/IT) thesis in 2002 was on the development of a Web-based SCADA system.