Industrial/Automation Forum

32-bit processors, sophisticated communication schemes, advanced chip technologies—yes, we are talking industrial

CONVENED AND MODERATED BY RICHARD COMERFORD

Changes in manufacturing are altering the landscape of global commerce. When they gathered in August, a team of industrial/automation experts shared their view of the critical events that were unfolding with Electronic Products .

Electronic Products: I’d like to begin by asking people about what they’ve seen in the way or recent advances in technologies and in products that are changing the way things are done in the industrial automation field. I’d like to ask Donna Imam to comment on that first.

Donna Imam (Industrial Market Development Manager, Networking and Computing Systems, Freescale Semiconductor) : From Freescale’s point of view, there are three major changes we see happening in the marketplace. First, high usage of 8-bit architectures, because industrial applications in general like to have solutions that are proven, not only quality-wise but functionality-wise and reliability-wise. But having said that, we also see a large movement from 8-bit architectures directly to 32-bit architectures, skipping the 16-bit. We see that happening because high levels of control processing are taking place at lower and lower levels of the industrial networking node or automation infrastructure per se. This implies that this transition is a necessary one and the market is willing to make this transition even with quality and reliability concerns.

The second change we see is movement from legacy standards for communications—field buses like Profibus and CAN—to Ethernet-based communication protocols. At one time, Ethernet was something you saw for networking only in your home or office. But because it’s been out there for some time now, Ethernet has proven itself a cost-effective, worldwide standard. So contrary to the tradition of building automation or general industrial applications on proprietary systems and standards, we see a move toward universal standards because they provide ease of integration into the infrastructure and the ability to incorporate more and more features sets into specific applications.

The third biggest change we see is customers wanting to spend less time on designing custom hardware, or even custom software for that matter, and they want to move to off-the-shelf hardware so they can spend more time developing their specific software-based applications to enhance their feature set offerings to the market and hence deliver more to the end customer.

Martin Mason (Director of Silicon Product Marketing, Actel) : Of course my perspective is a little bit more at the hardware implementation and the board level. And there’s really, I think, three areas that programmable logic is participating in the modernization, if you like, of the industrial control segmental space. They are three areas where historically we haven’t played as an industry and it’s actually technology changes within the FPGA that are offering new capabilities to the areas of industrial control.

The first and probably most significant was the introduction of mixed-signal programmable logic devices and a number of companies offering devices now that do degrees of power management, system management or have a simple ADC on board and allow for signal manipulation and integration with the programmable logic. Some of those devices, such as the Fusion parts from Actel, offer inputs up to 16 V, which is a new capability for a programmable logic perspective.

Beyond the mixed-signal capability, we see the integration of IP [intellectual property] taking place and in particular, companies such as Actel are offering high-end processors to integrate within the programmable-logic device and that allows for reduction of part counts, smaller form factors, and overall, a tighter integration and lower cost of the controller. And in particular, Actel offers a top version of the ARM core, the most popular 32-bit processor out there today, and we’re finding there’s a great deal of interest in that processor core inside an FPGA for industrial applications.

Electronic Products : So as Donna said, you actually do see this strong move toward 32-bit.

Martin Mason: It’s heading toward 32-bit and the integration and the space saving that comes from putting it inside the programmable-logic device is very attractive many applications.

And then the third and final aspect I’d say is what I’d call “cutting the cord” and I think there is a desire in all aspects of industrial scientific and medical applications to basically go wireless. I think that’s kind of a mega trend, if you like.

And the key criteria there is not so much the wireless infrastructure, which I think is well established. but it’s actually the desire to get low-power electronics and extend battery life. and there is a trend within the programmable-logic arena to offer ultra-low-power FPGA technology.

The flash-based technology again that Actel offers has the lowest power by several orders of magnitude compared with our competitors in this space and it’s an area that we see a great deal of interest in take up within the industrial community.

Electronic Products : Does that involve actually having RF capability within the FPGA as well?

Martin Mason: No, it doesn’t. We typically rely on standard low-cost chipsets, whether it be 802.11 or some of the ISM, 433-MHz-type standards that are out there for the transmission of data. What we are doing really is bridging between those wireless chipsets and the sensors and logic, or the control and automation subsystems inside the device.

So we act as kind of a bridging device. Sometimes doing the baseband, we might do some of the Ethernet MAC protocols and the TCP/IP stack within the FPGA fabric or we might just be preprocessing data before it gets sent over, some kind of wireless link back to a central service hub within the actual automation type environment.

Electronic Products : Do you foresee a time in which RF will come into FPGA or FPGA environments?

Martin Mason : You know, we have been asked to quote a lot of die business where we are siting alongside the RF infrastructure. And I suppose it’s only a matter of time before that technology might start coming into the FPGA products through system and package.

I think the question there is whether, as an FPGA company, would we supply an integrated solution. I think it’s much more likely that we would offer FPGA die, if you like, programmable-logic die to the system integrators, the people offering things like the RFIC tag labeling technology used in warehousing and some of the tracking schemes.

I think it’s much more likely that we would offer, if you like, a programmable-logic foundry-type service to those individuals offering die and allowing them to integrate it into a very small module that could be deployed on a unit basis.

Electronic Products : We’re going to move now a little bit from the micro perspective to a more macro perspective. I’d like to ask Ravi Jain to comment on what he sees as issues in the packaging protection areas for circuitry in the factory automation environments.

Ravi Jain (Director of Engineering, Bud Industries) : We have been in the business of manufacturing and marketing enclosures for electronics and electrical industry for many, many years, and in the 36 years I’ve been with the company, I’ve seen many changes in the industry as far as enclosures are concerned.

In the old days, we used to have real large enclosures made of sheet metal, extrusions and die-castings and primarily metal. And now with recent advances in technology, instrumentation and devices don’t take that much space like the old days. The industry is now aiming to move toward miniaturization of the equipment. As a result, we in the enclosure industry also had to come out with new products that would cater to this change in the applications.

One of the most recent trend that we are seeing in our industry is moving toward plastic and fiberglass enclosures.

Some applications are also moving from large sheet metal enclosures to small die-cast aluminum boxes. And now we are also seeing further miniaturization in many applications such as enclosure for USB-based interfaces, card readers, and as one gentleman mentioned, in barcoding and the RFID. All these new applications require types of a devices and we are trying to develop enclosures for these needs.

Electronic Products : There’s always has been some sensitivity about RF interference, but with more and different RF signals in the environment, is there more concern how that’s handled by enclosures?

Ravi Jain : Yes, a few years ago, when EMI/RFI interference concerns started becoming a big issue, many people had to take care of this FCC requirement. At that point they could not change electronics so quickly at the board level or at the lower component levels. The easiest solution was to buy the housing or the cabinet that would provide the required shielding.

Now, because of miniaturization and the advances in electronics, many of the component-level manufacturers are addressing the need and limiting their emissions (RFI/EMI) at the board level, at the component level, or at the sub-rack/sub-unit level that are small enclosure housed inside a bigger cabinet.

Because of the cost involved in providing EMI/RFI shielding for a large enclosure, economically it is advisable or desirable to have shielding done at the component level. This is true not only from the cost point of view, it also provides more effective shielding.

Terry Bradley (Business Development Automation, E-T-A) : E-T-A has manufactured circuit protection devices and it is from that perspective I’d like to speak today. The new trend that we see relative to circuit protection is electronic circuit protection at the 24-Vdc level— not only discrete but each circuit protecting 24-Vdc loads. We also see additional diagnostics in these devices that will help reduce downtime, which I feel is one of the biggest factors that needs to be addressed when designing automation. We feel that, at minimum, it is imperative to have digital feedback regarding the status of the electronic circuit protection and, in some cases, an analog signal that is linear to the load is also appropriate.

We also feel that it’s necessary to integrate the communication platform into our 24-Vdc protection, put it into a package such that we can communicate on some of the standard protocols such as Ethernet, DeviceNet and some of the other industrial protocols. Wireless is another upcoming trend that we plan on integrating as well. This is something we are currently working on

As the gentleman from Bud Industries said, enclosure space is always an issue, which is why we do very high density packages and in reduced sizes.

Another trends we see is the impact of foreign labor in main manufacturing which is constantly driving us to develop better product, as well as reduce cost.

Electronic Products : With regard to 24 Vdc, what’s happening that’s making that become predominant?

Terry Bradley : For one thing, more and more devices are going to 24 Vdc. In Europe, they’ve been doing this much longer than in the U.S.. You have smaller currents to deal with smaller wire sizes, reduced electrical shock, and a whole host of other benefits that can be obtained by utilizing low voltage versus high voltage.

Electronic Products : Is there a demand in Asia for 24 Vdc?

Terry Bradley : We haven’t seen that yet; it’s primarily Europe and American applications. I think Asia is an upcoming market, but a lot of the manufacturing over there is still more manual than automated.

Kirk Olund (Quality and Reliability group, Fairchild Semiconductor) : I don’t have quite as much detail on the products but I’ve got a pretty good knowledge of them. Fairchild of course is the Power Franchise. We have a system-wide knowledge of power, especially in the industrial areas. We see is a lot of integration, bringing in analog, power products and, some optoelectronic capabilities and trying to improve and help our customers manage power efficiency.

And we’ve got new products out there now in the areas of Smart Power Modules SPM for all different types of power supply applications, power switches, motor drivers, everything that’s intended to reduce the power consumption at the finished product level.

We have a lot of support resources out there as well and we’re really getting more into helping customers understand power management in the products and working with them to improve the efficiency of their finished product. Our global power resources, of which we have 13 around the world, actually work closely with customers to optimize their designs.

Electronic Products : Is there an issue with the actual quality of power coming into environments and factories as well? Is that a continuing problem with power?

Kirk Olund : Yes, it can be, but in general, the products that are out there nowadays smooth out the singularities pretty well. We have actually seen a couple of cases here and there that have been traced back to that being an issue. But what it comes down to is good design methodologies at both the system level and the component level.

Electronic Products : Do you also see more demand for digital management of power, more flexibility in the way power is managed?

Kirk Olund : Yeah, there’s lot of movement into the area of power switches and using those to become more efficient.

Joel Shapiro (Group Manager, Product Marketing, National Instruments) : I’m involved with our industrial measurement and control products, specifically programmable automation controller (PAC) and networked measurement platforms. One of the biggest trends we’ve seen has been the proliferation of FPGAs being used in embedded design, specifically in industrial measurement, monitoring, and control applications.

From talking with our customers and looking at different surveys, we’ve seen a huge amount of embedded designs and industrial machines are built with custom hardware or FPGAs to augment the control and measurement platforms with advanced functionality. Some surveys are showing that up to 80% of embedded designs are now using FPGAs.

One big advancement that we’ve seen is the evolution of programmable automation controllers (PACs) to include programmable FPGAs, providing a single platform that offers the processing power and openness of a PC, the reliability and ruggedness of a PLC, and the high-speed and performance of custom circuitry.

We found that many PACs are being used in conjunction with custom hardware. If you’re a machine builder and you have digital or analog sensors, such as an encoder, that require custom signal conditioning and/or precise timing, you need to develop custom circuitry to translate the sensor signal into something that can connect directly to your PAC or PLC. This complicates the process by having multiple boxes inside your machine, and requires you to do a lot of additional programming and development.

By providing a programmable FPGA in a PAC, engineers are now able to combine the custom hardware circuitry and performance in a single platform that’s also doing their monitoring and control.

Electronic Products : Are software and hardware design being done concurrently for industrial automation?

Joel Shapiro : Absolutely. And with so many people using FPGAs, one of the traditional barriers to entry was that you have to be a very experienced and specialized developer to be able to harness the benefits of an FPGA and custom circuitry. While these benefits can be huge, the development efforts to program FPGAs, such as VHDL coding, are very steep. So it can require larger development teams with specialists to do. What we’re seeing now is system level tools that are abstracting the low leveldetails of programming FPGAs, making them much easier to use.

One example of a system level development tool is LabVIEW, an intuitive graphical programming language that abstracts the low-level details of programming applications running on a variety of targets—from Windows to an FPGA. LabVIEW allows domain experts—such as scientists in the fields of physics or medicine—who don’t have special training with embedded systems or FPGAs, to harness them in their applications. In addition, by combining FPGAs into a single PAC platform, smaller development teams, or even a single person can be familiar with one design language, and develop a system that spans the traditionally separate expertise.

Electronic Products : I would think that that would have a dramatic impact on the rate at which one could deploy, say, wireless networking systems, to get those rapidly programmed and out into the field.

Joel Shapiro : Absolutely. One thing a lot of people have touched upon today is the proliferation of Ethernet. A lot of programmable automation controllers are Ethernet based and all of the National Instruments programmable automation controllers have standard Ethernet ports on them. This allows you to take your embedded system and very easily hook that up with industrial-grade wireless access points, converting them into remote and wireless deployed systems.

Steve Massie (Product Manager for New Technology, Omron Electronic Components) : Some of the things that we see, and which we also supply, are new technology, MEMS pressure and flow, which we make in our own wafer fabs.

We’ve seen a lot of the wireless, a lot of the ZigBee, and we’re getting involved with the ultra-wide band antenna technologies and a lot stuff that goes into 802.15 personal area networks.

We’ve been in the RFID business for quite a long time now. And we’re also getting into more of the commercial side of that. We’re also into touch-sensing technology, micro-machining technologies, of course, and the photo-micro-sensing technologies.

Traditionally Omron was in the electro-mechanical switches and relays arena, but that has been changed very fast to these new micro technologies which I just mentioned.

Electronic Products : Do you see you see increased levels of interest and deployment in terms of sensors for industrial automation and robotics.

Steve Massie : Oh sure.

Electronic Products : Are people doing different kinds of sensing than they had been doing in the past? Or is it that they can do more of it?

Steve Massie : Well they can do more of it. What MEMS does is make sensing a lot smaller than it used to be. We’re talking about elements that are basically 1.5 by 1.5 mm, much smaller than we used to have with traditional discrete products.

Electronic Products : So these could go into places where they have never gone before actually because of their size.

Steve Massie : Right.

Electronic Products : And so people can get better control of processes because they’re able to do sensing they haven’t been able to before.

Steve Massie : Right. And if you go into a factory environment, a lot of these MEMS sensors are placed in bigger control-type products, so you can go from a discrete product and go from a factory environment and put it into an entire control.

Electronic Products : So information is constantly being reported on the status of the controller and of different parts within the factory. So you’re able to do a better preventive maintenance and prognostics on these systems.

Steve Massie : Right.

Electronic Products : So I guess the bottom line is that the downtime is being considerably decreased in factories by being able to do this.

Steve Massie : I would hope so.

Roland Chapa (Vice President, Assemblies Business Units, Optek) : Traditionally we’re an infrared sensor company and offer a lot of standard off-the-shelves sensor but tend to focus on custom applications. We’re bringing our broad line of visible LED products into the industrial automation market with custom solutions for a lot different lighting applications, andd so forth.

We are seeing are a lot more sensing applications being developed for the industrial market. As was said previously, they’re smaller, they’re more energy efficient, and in many cases wireless, for remote sensing.

So there are many places to apply these sensors, and all of them are tied back to microprocessors or other types of electronics that can literally monitor multiple areas of the factory floor, as well as other processes, using infrared technology.

A lot of infrared applications we tend to be involved with are barcoding, vision inspection systems, and encoder applications for robotics or speed control, as well as safety curtains and many other tasks along those lines. Recently, Optek has also been looking into ultraviolet technology for curing epoxies, and air and water purification.

As you can see, sensors can fit into many processes that exist in industrial and automation markets.

Electronic Products : The application of IR for data transfer, is that kind of disappearing in the factory?

Roland Chapa : Actually, we see IrDA [infrared data acquisition] type devices used to transmit information via an infrared LED source to a sensor in a remote location, where the two pieces of equipment are not necessarily connected. We see a lot of need for infrared sensing technology.

Electronic Products : How does that fit in with other wireless technologies?

Roland Chapa : Infrared is more of a line-of-sight type of communication, where wireless may not have that restriction, but it is a very efficient and secure method of communication. Also, when we talk about infrared communication, there are fiber-optic products that Optek is offering for industrial datacom applications.

Electronic Products : And that’s where you want to have a direct point-to-point communication as opposed to broadcasting.

Roland Chapa : Correct. That’s exactly right.

One of the other areas that I mentioned earlier is the LED lighting. We are doing work in this area where we see applications requiring the LED be very efficient. LEDs also have a long life, typically around 50,000 hours. When you have critical areas of factory illumination where you can’t always apply fluorescent or other types of lighting, then LED lighting would be the most viable option.

Additionally, you do have the ability to change colors for accommodating different processes within the factories if in some areas you may not want super bright lights or different types of lights. It also allows for better inspection lighting when you’re looking at either different types of electronic parts or products or maybe a food-processing area.

Electronic Products : How does that currently fair in terms of price, against things like fluorescent and incandescent lighting? I would think that the long-term cost would be much lower.

Roland Chapa : The long-term cost is lower. We do see hesitation from many customers using either fluorescent or incandescent-type lighting because they are inexpensive. But what happens is there are locations that are very difficult to reach, and you have to use a lift to get up into the ceiling areas.

Also, for some of these LEDs, you can’t cater the color temperature to meet specific lighting requirements, whether it’s a cool white or what we call a warm white or daylight white.

Electronic Products : I wondered if others wanted to address any of the topics that their fellow participants in the roundtable have brought up.

Donna Imam : I guess one of the things that I’d like to comment on is several people talked about the proliferation of FPGAs when it comes to industrial- and automation-type applications.

Freescale’s PowerQUICC 32-bit processor devices have an IP block we call the QUICCEngine that handles communications processing onboard the 32-bit processor itself. We find that the programmability of this block is being leveraged by many of industrial customers, since we’ve opened up that part of the IP to several partners to do microcode programming. So it has the ability to do some of the things that FPGAs are doing today.

The reason I bring that up is, when it comes to industrial networking, we see a lot of deterministic protocols—not only the field buses but Ethernet-based protocols such as Ethernet/IP, Ethernet Powerlink—gaining a lot of ground in this marketplace.

To bring some of those protocols to the market—for example IEEE 1588, which is a time synchronization protocol, or Profibus, which is one of the leading field buses—we can leverage QUICCEngine to do some of the hardware assist that’s needed. So I would agree with the others that we do see that kind of functionality still as a need, but at the same time we also see customers wanting to go more and more to standard off-the-shelf type solutions. And in June, we announced an industrial development board which gives the customer the ability to evaluate these industrial protocols without having to have proprietary hardware or an external FPGA in addition to their microprocessor.

So I agree that tighter integration is necessary.

Martin Mason : Well, I think really the point that’s being made and I kind of concur with it is that there are different solutions to the problem; you can obviously go with a software-based solution. You can go with a hardware-based solution.

And the point that was making from Actel’s perspective is we’re one of the few FPGA providers out there that offer ARM standard industrial cores that offer mixed-signal capabilities and ultra low power. And it’s kind of an enabling technology allowing customers to get with degree of integration that they can’t with other FPGA suppliers or solutions.

And so you’ve got FPGAs now approaching data integration system (old chip) play from a slightly different perspective from the microcontroller, the microprocessor products. And each of them has their merits. There’s always the degree of additional flexibility that you get in some of the processor-based products but I think you also get fast response time in programmable logic, which can be crucial in certain industrial applications. You get the ability to do vast amounts of data processing in parallel in a hardware-based solution.

And I think in many cases, you also get a lot of power profile, which does allow you to cut those costs and make the sensors either battery powered or portable which is also highly desirable and kind of one of those trends that we see taking place.

So I think both solutions have that place in the marketplace. I just think we now have some enabling technology, which really allows programmable logic to go into applications where they weren’t before.

Joel Shapiro : I agree with what Donna was saying about customers looking for off-the-shelf tools. National Instruments has worked with different industry leaders to provide off-the-shelf tools and platforms that combine the best of all of the worlds.

So if you look at CompactRIO, one of our programmable automation controllers. It features a Freescale Power-PC processor, which runs a real-time operating system on it. So, if you need high-processing power, for tasks such as running advanced control algorithms or signal analysis, you can do that on the controller.

But we also have integrated that with a programmable FPGA, because while you want to do a lot of your tasks on the processor, being able to combine those tasks with the ability to design custom circuitry with FPGAs, for tasks like custom signal conditioning or embedding and protecting valuable IP in hardware, allows a single platform to solve applications that traditionally required multiple platforms and tools.

And so I think one of the trends we’re seeing is different industry companies working together to provide a complete platform solution that can meet the many and different needs of the marketplace.

Electronic Products : Let ask everybody now to think global. What impact is globalization having on all of you as far as the products you’re supplying into the marketplace, and the way that you yourselves are operating in designing your products? What are the impact of international and global standards like RoHS and energy efficiency? We’ve recently seen some big issues regarding product quality; how do you deal with ensuring product quality so that you can compete globally.

Roland Chapa : One of the things that we are talking about as far as the globalization is it does force us to be more efficient in our communication not only across, borders but different cultures and languages. That presents a lot of challenges in itself.

But the one thing that does allow us to work in that environment is standards. International standards like ISO, and quality environmental standards. I think what’s happening is there’s also a lot of tools that have been developed from a design perspective that we use in communicating with our customers that can be either software or hardware, et cetera.

So I think standardization is a byproduct of a lot of the globalization that is going on as we communicate to other countries and in cultures.

Electronic Products : Can you give us an example of some of the types of tools you were talking about that permits you to communicate globally?

Roland Chapa : In our development efforts, we tend to do a lot of mechanical design. We’ll use software programs like SolidWorks and Unigraphics. When we communicate mechanical designs to other tooling houses or manufacturing subcontractors, we tend to use an IGES format or StepFiles or Parasolids so that they know exactly what we’re trying to build and how we’re trying to put it together.

Electronic Products : So those programs are de facto standards?

Roland Chapa : In the environment that we’re dealing with, they are very standard.

Terry Bradley : One of the emphases we have on is development international-based products. As a European manufacturer, our products were traditionally geared for European markets. Now there is a very big emphasis on developing products that are truly international, and unfortunately some of the standards haven’t really caught up. We’re dealing with different types of standards still and hopefully that will change. However, I think that, you know, most people in the development base are looking at product sales not just in North America but also Europe and Asia as well.

Electronic Products : What types of electrical standards have proven to be challenging here?

Terry Bradley : I think it’s communication in the development process, when you’re dealing with it across the Atlantic. Obviously, you know, we used to work with engineers in Europe in development, with European mindsets and European applications.

So the key is developing communication between engineering groups—which I can say we have today, we’re doing very well in that. But it was originally a struggle. It’s important to find the common ground, so as to develop products that are truly international, not just for US application, not just for European application.

Electronic Products : Is it the perspective on the point of the designer or engineers which is really different?

Terry Bradley : Yes…well, the application is different. For example, as I mentioned previously, the 24-Vdc applications in Europe. They’ve been doing 24 Vdc far longer than the U.S. in, for example, motor control. It’s very common in European panel to have a 24 –Vdc coil, but here it’s virtually unheard of.

From a U.S. designer’s point of view, we’re not going use 24 Vdc at this point because, one, it’s more expensive and, two, that coil is not readily available. We deal with off-the-shelf technology and disposable technology.

Electronic Products : But in Europe it would be very common, so there’d be no problem getting hold of this.

Terry Bradley : It’s very typical to utilize 24-Vdc control, which is one reason that E-T-A developed electronic circuit protection at 24-Vdc level. The mentality in the United States has always been to provide ac protection in power supplies and leave the dc alone.

But when you look at distributed control systems, and you have different areas of automation with a common power supply, having a short circuit means you’re going to take an entire system down. Whereas when you can isolate the diagnostic feedback to know that you have a problem with a specific circuit, or even a specific load, then we can even bring it to the level where we integrate our circuit protection with switching. You actually have an analog signal linear to the load, so you essentially have provided a closed-loop systems with a 24-Vdc application.

Steve Massie : Globalization hasn’t been a big issue for Omron, being an international company. Everything is pretty much global as it is. Most of our controls are pretty much marked with every single label you can think of. It’s kind of interesting point and some of our products we actually run out of room to put the international labels on. A lot of our controls and automation products are designed to run from a wide ranges of different voltages.

Years ago our customer base used to need a design for North America, for Europe, a design for the Pac rim. But now they say, “We only one product for the whole world.”

Electronic Products : Do you ever run into competition that’s only selling locally and, because they’re not being as rigorous, able to bring a product to market at a price that undercuts your product?

Steve Massie : Some of them undercut, but it’s getting more and more standard to have as many markings as you can on the product, to have more global products. That’s pretty much the name of the game because it is a global industry nowadays.

Electronic Products : And so you’re producing one product that can satisfy a global demand, and I guess the volumes go up accordingly.

Steve Massie : Yes, and I would say it’s probably more so for the industrial products. And they are getting into a lot of the commercial products too, because they’re going into products that are going into global markets, like the appliance market; white-goods products are a global market now.

It’s all one market. So slowly, our customers want to make one product. They may still may have one product for North America and one for Europe, but they’re slowly gravitating toward trying to get as many products as they can for global use.

Electronic Products : Is the machinery that’s being supplied to factories throughout the world tending to be one type of machine that can be put into Europe, Asia, North and South America—wherever you want to have the factory; is it is the same machine no matter where you go?

Steve Massie : Yes, that’s pretty much the case.

Joel Shapiro : One thing that we’re seeing is definitely it’s becoming the norm for people to globalize their design and manufacturing. Ironically, this also puts their Intellectual Property at risk. So we’re seeing a lot of our customers wanting to protect their IP and make sure that, as they distribute their design and manufacturing, something that has so much value to them, that’s unique to them, stays protected.

Going back to a bit to the previous conversation, FPGAs are really addressing this in two specific areas. The first one is that we’re seeing a lot of board design – or at least portions of them—being outsourced. I think up to 50% of people are saying that they outsource a portion of their board design. By using FPGAs, you can keep more of that design in-house without having to spread it around.

The second thing we’ve seen is that by letting you put IP in a hardware, FPGAs are a great way to protect IP. When you generate a bit stream and put it into the FPGA, you’re not including a source file.So essentially once you lock that IP in the hardware, it becomes much harder for people to access it, to take a look at it and reverse engineer it. So, a lot of our customers have been very happy; we’ve found a lot are more confident that their IP can be protected once it’s in the FPGA.

Electronic Products : And that IP can be delivered in hardware even for maintenance and things like that, so there’s no question about opening up the IP to someone else.

Joel Shapiro : Actually we now have tools that allow you to hard code in specific serial numbers, or other things, so even if you have the exact same bit stream on two identical platforms, you can tie it to a specific platform by a variety of different methods.

Electronic Products : And identified by interrogation?

Joel Shapiro : Yes.

Martin Mason : I think it’s a very valid point that’s brought up. Actel, you know, has been the leader in the security aspect of programmable logic and we’ve seen that as globalization gets more prevalent, the opportunity for people to copy, duplicate, or steal IP, and to mass produce components around the world, is just too tempting.

Programmable logic provides a very good way to control materials flow during the manufacturing of units that are subsequently going to be deployed in the industrial automation area. It’s an area where there are good margins, and using the secure FPGA technology is a little bit of insurance that can go along way toward protecting your brand and protecting your margins and your accuracy in the long term and we do see a lot of customers using Programmable Logic suggest that security and IP protection issue that was brought up.

Electronic Products : You know, it sounds like part of what we’re saying here is that with globalization comes the demand for higher security in all the operations in the factory from the point of view of maintaining your IP. I’m wondering if there’s also kind of espionage, of attacks on factories, that might go on to try and prevent them from being able to produce.

Martin Mason : I think you’ve actually got competing issues and that is the demand for flexibility, for globalization perspective, the ability to change or customize design to a logic, make systems modular is highly desirable but with that comes the risk that you can be ripped off.

Flexibility usually implies some vulnerability to IP protection and security and so what you’re looking for really is a programmable platform that is also highly secure and there are a number of solutions out there and most of them centered around non-volatile FPGA or microprocessor-based technology.

Donna Imam : When it comes to globalization, there’s two items. First one of the things Freescale has been doing around it’s silicon solutions is that we’re tying in a lot of third party partners that are providing our customers with software solutions based on our hardware and not only software but also microcode for our QUICCEngine. (I mentioned earlier that Freescale has opened its QUICCEngine technology for the customers.)

And so one of the things that Freescale has done in order to assist IP protection that is we have only opened it up to select partners that will be able to cater to our larger customer base in terms of enabling competitive technologies.

But at the same time as we partner with many different companies around the world that are bringing value to this design infrastructure around industrial, we face the issue from a marketing standpoint (which I didn’t see anybody address), which is figuring out how to give them the marketing channels globally, especially when it comes to niche type solutions that we’re providing on top of our processors.

Freescale itself is a global company in every terms of that word “global,” but when we partner with other entities, we find that providing that marketing channel which is easily accessible and as readily accessible as it is in North America is a challenge when we go abroad.

Kirk Olund : I would echo some of that. The other thing, as one of the participants mentioned, is that there used to be design centers in the U.S., in Europe, or wherever. With globalization it’s really become important to have design center resources across the world because a lot of the design is now outsourced as well and not only design of the system itself but it also comes back to the components that are in that system. So we find that it’s very important to have worldwide resources.

In addition, as was just mentioned, the supply chain is very important. You need to be transparent to your customers. Services in the US are pretty good, with, as you know, a lot of direct shipments and a lot of distributors available. You have to make sure that you have the same type of system set up worldwide so that from a customer perspective there’s no difference in the service they receive.

Ravi Jain : Can I ask a few questions? How does this new technology impact the enclosure that they are trying to build?

Also, one gentleman mentioned that they are running into many issues about markings and standards. There are so many standards that customers are looking for—UL, ETEX, RoHS (which of course is the hottest issue). How are all these issues being addressed and does any one see any problems or issues with these?

Kirk Olund : It’s not so much problems or issues but it is something that definitely is different and you have to keep track of it all. Being a global participant in business, you need to understand the rules and regulations for all the different countries and the environmental ones are getting a lot of attention lately.

RoHS itself, from a component perspective, was relatively straightforward but as we expand now or the world expands into RoHS in China and Korea and other countries, there has to be an active program to keep up with those regulations and make sure you’re compliant. Companies that don’t have active participation are going to fall behind and find themselves in trouble.

Roland Chapa : On RoHS, I do think it’s a very common standard now. Optek went through an 18-month transition period to convert all of our products. The challenge we saw was the material availability was not always there when we were ready to make the change or when our customers were asking us to make the change.

We do have the continuous monitoring of the raw materials because we have to send certificates of compliance that the material is RoHS compliant and we make sure that everything that we’re manufacturing with in the processes is in compliance with those regulations.

Additionally we’re now even exploring the WEEE requirements that are coming out of Far Eastern Asia. In some cases those are even more stringent than the European requirements.

Electronic Products : Is RoHS becoming a generic term at this point and does the way people implement non-polluting design differ country by country?

Kirk Olund : RoHS has become a relatively generic term and as other countries get onboard and restrict hazardous materials. The legislation or regulations in those countries are being called RoHS as well, like China RoHS. It’s just a common term, but of course they have their own title to their legislation.

Those types of restrictions of hazardous materials are really just the beginning. There are a lot of other regulations or directives that are out there; Europe is working out some them.

There’s chemical-use restriction or regulations in the REACH legislation and then there’s the power efficiency requirements, and those are also likely to catch on and be proliferated to other countries as well.

Electronic Products : I take it that chemical requirements are not a matter of the chemicals being delivered in the end product, but chemicals that are used within the processes?

Kirk Olund : It’s actually both. Because it applies to chemicals used in the process and chemicals used in the product itself. So whereas RoHS restricts six different materials, REACH expands to all chemicals and defines them as to whether they’re hazardous or not, that type of thing.

Electronic Products : That sounds massive.

Kirk Olund : And it gets more into the manufacturing process as opposed to just the final product.

Electronic Products : So its sort of protecting workers in the factory environments.

Kirk Olund : Right now, it’s primarily in Europe, but it’s a model and it’s likely to spread.

Donna Imam : One of the challenges that Freescale faces is supporting both RoHS and non-RoHS in a wide ranging product portfolio, and specifically catering to those who do not want to move to RoHS. I’m not sure if others see that also.

Steve Massie : At Omron we don’t see anybody who really does not want RoHS; a lot of our people are commercial. I’m sure anybody who supplies to aerospace doesn’t.

Roland Chapa : The two areas that we see that are not currently migrating into the RoHS requirement are military/aerospace and automotive area. Most of our current or legacy automotive products require that we keep all the materials as they are, and we see that as a challenge in the future because, as more companies and countries are adopting these requirements, those non-RoHS piece parts and materials become scarce.

Additionally, the medical companies are not moving into the RoHS at this time.

Electronic Products : There’s an issue for liability with new materials that people have brought up in the past.

Martin Mason : At the end of the day, I think, it’s less about liability, and more about reliability of the lead free components. And I think some of those concerns that were brought up for Mil/Aero we also see it in certain telecom infrastructures, which have very long qualification cycle. They also want to see how the product is actually performing in volume deployment before they actually move to a RoHS position.

I will say from Actel’s perspective about 60% of all the product that we ship today is RoHS compliant and we offer a mix of both green and non-green products to our diverse customer base. But there are challenges associated with just supplying a proliferation of line items and I can understand particularly the manufacturers of standard products getting concerned about a massive numbers of green and non-green variations of product that they have to put on that.

Steve Massie : I’m surprised about the automotive, since they were the first guys to ban cadmium about 15 or 20 years ago. They were jumping on RoHS before it became standard, so that’s kind of unusual.

Kirk Olund : I think the big reason for that, though, was the “tin whiskers” problem. So they are big on getting rid of most of the other chemicals or materials that are restricted by RoHS but there’s fear for tin whiskers.

It is a big issue for global suppliers like Fairchild who have a lot of standard products that have to meet all these various restrictions. It does proliferate part numbers; you have to have parts that are RoHS compliant, and green materials, and China RoHS…and it does become a logistical nightmare.

Electronic Products : I would think that manufacturing operations would be a bit reluctant to change over to the use of new materials in systems that are designed for long application times, to take the chance on some new materials having an unknown problem. There would be resistance from the factories for that reason.

Roland Chapa : As far as the conversion process, as you mentioned, there was a lot of concern about how to manage that. In the manufacturing facilities we’ve actually set up areas where we have all the non-leaded processes and then we have a separate area that uses the leaded type processes.

Once again as mentioned before I think that from the automotive perspective, their overall driver is reliability; they don’t want to have a problem out in the field in 5, 10, or 15 years and so, at this point, they’re not switching away from proven processes.

Electronic Products : There’s a case where reliability and liability come right together.

Roland Chapa : Absolutely.

Steve Massie : There have been some issues with RoHS that has nothing to do with the lead versus non-lead, where changing the material can wreck havoc with the process. So there are other things that have to be considered in addition to changing just the actual material.

Electronic Products : Where changing the environmental profile of the process resulted in the need to change other materials which were not contaminating materials?

Steve Massie : Right. So basically if there’s a plastic that was used, and let say there’s a 20º temperature change in the reflow process, in addition to being lead-free, the plastic’s properties have to be changed as well now. It can spiral, and the entire design may have to be changed, not just to eliminate materials prohibited by RoHS.

Electronic Products : It would seem that internationally, globally, processes are changing in pretty dramatic ways, where that hasn’t been the case in the past. Can any of you comment on that? Do you agree or disagree with this.

Kirk Olund : As far as manufacturing processes, there’s definitely changes there because they’re going to lead free. The manufacturing process temperatures have increased significantly, so there is an impact on the materials and you need to have a strong materials engineering group to be able to understand and plan for those.

And then as mentioned earlier, of course, there’s definitely changes to the processes for supply chain and distribution of products and making sure customers are comfortable using your products and design them in. So all of those processes have to be improved and globalized.

Electronic Products : And they are undergoing change at a fairly rapid rate.

Kirk Olund : Certainly.

Electronic Products : I’m curious if anyone can tell me what’s going on the area of industrial robotics? I mean at one time that was an important and major area but it seems to have grown so quiet.

Roland Chapa : We’ve talked a little bit earlier about the proliferation of the sensors into the industrial environment. Robotics is a perfect application that tends to use a lot of encoder type sensors and even position or proximity sensors as they’re managing materials or products or processes.

We work with a lot of manufacturers that incorporate these sensors in many different applications, both in what we would call a transmissive mode or in a reflective mode. Some of the sensors that we offer have either an analog or digital output, so it makes processing the data a lot easier once you are able to translate that mechanical movement into an electrical signal.

Electronic Products : So what does that do to add capability to the robot that it didn’t have before?

Roland Chapa : It allows for much more precision alignment and accuracy, in either the operation that it’s doing or the material that it’s handling, and so forth. I think it just gives tighter control, especially for process control applications. Also, you can incorporate cameras and different types of visual inspection into those operations that are automated.

Electronic Products : So robots are actually able to do much more refined work than they had been able to do in the past? And also there’s a greater level of quality control at the robotic station?

Roland Chapa : Exactly, it should be a lot more repeatable and accurate.

Martin Mason : Just an added perspective on the fine control. One of our design wins in the FPGA area is in medical surgical robotics, and that’s an area where you need the ultimate in fine motor control. They’ve been using some of our mixed-single FPGA products to actually do motor and actuator control within the robotic application.

Electronic Products : I guess this will eventually lead to applications in the industrial robotics as well. After all, it’s all robotics control, like the high-level industrial manufacturing robotics that we just being talked about. It’s an interesting analogy: in the medical arena, obviously, a slip with the scalpel is not acceptable. But I imagine a fabric cutter in a factory making garments is a similar thing. A slip with the knife is not acceptable because you ruin your profitability if don’t cut the cloth correctly.

Joel Shapiro : I think one thing that everyone agree with is that the convergence of technologies that are going into kind of modern day robotics and industrial machinery is really making the design in prototype and the deployment of these machines, a much more complicated task. So integrating things like HMIs and signal processing, control, IO, all those different aspects become very daunting.

And one trend that we’re seeing again goes back to the system level tools that really enable you to use maybe one or two methodologies to program and develop all of these different aspects.

And specifically, another trend I think megatronics is one that gets talked a lot about in terms of robotics as well has to do with the design practices of implementing these machines in robotics. And, you know, as there are so many different aspects now that go into the design of them, one area that’s really enabling people to design these products faster is the integration of different design tools.

And I think that really speak a lot to companies having to kind of go beyond their own walls and work together and provide tools that can communicate and allow an electrical engineer to work with the control engineer and work with the mechanical engineer to see how all of their different designs interact with each other and as they each make iterations and tweaks be able to see how those things interact with each other to be able to do their prototypes in software.

So we’re seeing a lot of things moving forward from the first prototype being physical which has happens much later in the design phase to be enable to take advantage of virtual or software prototypes being able to make sure and work out the (kinks) in those products earlier on so that you have a much more clear and confident passing forth once you go into your prototyping.

And update things that’s enabling this is different vendors working together and allowing their specific design tools to interact with each other. And one example of this would be a partnership the National Instruments has had with Solid Works. Being able to integrate their 3D CAD mechanical design software with LabVIEW lets you do your electrical and your control and your embedded design. Being able to use those tools together lets you really bring those first prototypes earlier in the development process.

Donna Imam : I think the biggest growth that we see from the robotic standpoint is service robotics, so not only in the industrial area but also robotics creeping into what we call consumer. As you know, the success story there is the portable vacuum cleaner that we see gaining a lot of ground in the marketplace. The one that goes around by itself, the Roomba.

I don’t know if those things are used in factories as well. It would make seem to make sense to have robotic cleaners in factories as well. And the thing that I’d like to harp on one more time is, when it comes to factory robotics and globalization, those two things tie into Ethernet.

So today you have a global company with industrial-type manufacturing plants all over the world and they want not only access their manufacturing data in real time, efficiently, but also to pass the data around and, in addition to that, secure each of those locations in a way such that it is alienated from those trying to hack into those specific system. So we’re looking at local networks needing to be separated from global networks; but in addition, being able to pass data around globally so that they can monitor and fix any issues real time.

When I say fix issues I mean, for example, that you have a line down in one country and you have engineers in another who can get online and be able to talk to the robot that’s doing that function or the lowest level of the network and find out what the issues are and be able to fix them from miles and miles away.

That is where we see deterministic protocols come into play. Industrial protocols running on top of Ethernet give those local networks specific to certain applications the needed separation from the greater network—the Internet—to which it is most likely connected today, and which is susceptible to security lapses.

Electronic Products : So what’s important is to have the granularity to be able to get down to the lowest level in the factory and, at the same time, have the highest level of security so that someone can’t come in and decide to change your factory output.

Donna Imam : Exactly. And you’re taking away that need for the technician to be in the same country by giving that person the ability to communicate with a device thousands of miles away in a way as if he were right there.

Electronic Products : And so your expertise is also spread globally.

Kirk Olund : In our factory, for instance, each generation of fab becomes more and more automated. Assembly becomes more and more automated. So robotics in automation plays a big part. But I think there’s always tradeoffs as far as the cost involved versus cost of labor.

For example, at our new factory in China, the managers can actually log on to the Internet and look and see what’s going on in production floor from their apartment. And if there are problems, they can actually see them; see what’s going on and know it. So we do have quite a bit of automation and electronics that we use.

Electronic Products : I’m wondering if robotics is a way to compete; a way to provide a factory in a place where labor cost wouldn’t ordinarily permit that factory to operate cost effectively?

Roland Chapa : Optek recently upgraded how it manufactures LED and phototransistor product, a manufacturing process in which we do a lot of high-speed wire bonding and encapsulation. We’ve upgraded our equipment in order to improve in several areas. First, just the overall efficiency; some of the new equipment is literally capable of doing thousands of wire bonds per minute. Also, we improved the placement of the die, which is mounted on the leadframe’s optical center and critical to our product. Finally, the overall repeatability of the process, so that we know we’ve got a very controlled, fine-tuned process to optimize the performance of our product.

Robotics in our internal factory has yielded significant improvement in the overall performance of the product, which ultimately is a competitive issue. We have to be able to compete in a lot of different markets.

Electronic Products : It seems it would also be easier to duplicate that line anywhere in the world using that approach.

Roland Chapa : Yes. And the equipment is from different parts of the world. Some of the equipment is manufactured in Germany, and the most recent is from Asia.

Martin Mason : Semiconductors have always been capital intensive, and that’s going to continue. In fact, it will probably accelerate as the latest products present challenges of ever closer I/O pads on the die and the need for better wire bonding techniques that were talked about here.

We’ve had our products designed into things like motor controls and moving the X/Y axis table in wire bonders themselves. It’s an area where more and more electronics is going to be deployed. It’s an area where more and more automation is taking place.

I’d also add that, on the test floor, pick-and-place machines are very, very common now and they can be set up and configured to do a lot of of nasty jobs—handling semiconductor device with extended temperatures for automotive applications for example. It is very time consuming and actually can be quite dangerous, given that the device temperature is up over 100°C for final test. Pick and place machines just do an excellent job of dealing with that type of issue; you can load the machine up and the devices goes into a temperature soak before they go in to final test..

So it becomes much more batch oriented; you get much greater throughput. Overall, it just results in a much higher quality product that you can put out, while allowing the operators to actually add value in other areas of the production flow.

It’s an inevitable that increased automation is going to take place. It’s very capital intensive, which always makes justifying the return on the investment a challenge. (But there’s nothing new there I think the industry has been that way for the past 40 years.)

Ravi Jain : In enclosure manufacturing, significant automation is difficult economically unless the quantities are high. The lot quantities vary—like in custom manufacturing—anywhere from one piece to 100 and up to 500 pieces. So full-scale automation is not economically feasible.

However, there are a few manufacturing processes where automation has been successfully implemented. CNC punching and laser cutting is now very common in enclosure manufacturing. Automatic gauging is widely used on programmable power brakes. Robotic welding is also getting very common; we used to spot weld most of our large cabinet frames manually, but now we are using robotic welding. This has helped us cut down our costs, improve our deliveries and quality.

Another application area for robotics has been in the finishing process. We have a powder-coating line that was installed about 15 years ago. It has automated, vertically reciprocating spray guns that electrostatically deposit powder on the products and enclosures. It has helped improve the quality of our finishes significantly.

Joel Shapiro : In terms of the networking of robotics, I definitely agree with the comments about how, by having an Ethernet-based controller, one of the big advantages is that people from all over the world can log on and have real time update and status.

Another advantage that we’re seeing a lot, and it goes back to the impact globalization in design, is that you can also have field upgradeability from anywhere in the world by having an Ethernet port on your controller.

If you have built and deploy a network machine or robot, and you need to make changes it, to send up the next revision, and it’s somewhere across the world, you don’t have to send one of your technicians over there to do that. You can now deploy that upgraded application or embedded program to the machine’s controller over the Ethernet.

Electronic Products : And with the security level necessary make sure that there is no harm done in that process.

Joel Shapiro : Absolutely.

Electronic Products : Time’s running out and I’d like to give everyone a chance to sum up. Since you started this off, Donna, why don’t you start off ending up.

Donna Imam : I started by mentioning three major changes that we see in the marketplace today, and I’d like to conclude by saying what Freescale strategy is when it comes to addressing these changes.

The migration toward 32-bit means getting the processing power you need in industrial applications. In certain areas we’re talking low power, and every industry has its power envelope max that it needs to meet. The second part of it is Ethernet, and the third part of it is providing off-the-shelf hardware for the customer along with software stacks that customers don’t want to maintain in-house anymore.

Freescale has addressed this by taking on an active role in simplifying industrial deterministic protocols on our processors. We’re doing it on 32-bit processors that are not only low power but also have the flexibility and programmability like that of the FPGA, so the customer can develop and run their secure network stacks or communications protocols on the processor itself.

And thirdly, we’re doing that with third parties that not only have a lot of expertise, but can also give the customer the kind of service, and maintaining their proprietary aspects, which industrial customers have not only learned to use but appreciate. One of the way we’ve done that is we’ve taken our silicon and we’re providing production-ready platforms. We came out the first one with two months ago; based on the PowerQUICC 8360, the MPC8360E-RDK is an industrial protocol development board which has as daughter card in the COM Express form factor.

The customer can not only develop with it, but they can take that COM Express module straight to production if they wish. It’s not only available as a development system but it’s also available in production-ready format and has all the capabilities that I just mentioned, so that’s how we’re addressing it and bringing value to this marketplace.

Martin Mason : I think really that the point that I would make is about the competing demands for flexibility and configurability which FPGA seems to deal with very nicely. There’s always pressure on cost and I think, through integration of IP, mixed-signal, and low-power capabilities, FPGA suppliers are now addressing a lot of the needs and requirement of the industrial space in a way that they have never done before. And a lot of that is coming through the deployment of non-volatile technology within the FPGA product offerings.

We’ve always had a great deal of success with the industrial application space. It’s a big segment for Actel and to help our customers design tomorrow’s products, we continue to innovate in that area and the areas of automated design, power management, mixed signal, and low power.

Kirk Olund : I think as far as globalization and performing worldwide, it’s very important to understand your customers and their applications and the power needs that they’re trying to meet, because there’s so many more global requirements now than there ever used to be. And once you’ve got that in place, you have to make sure that you plan for the supply chain and make sure that you’ve got products available that are essentially transparent—that is, it doesn’t matter where they’re built or where they come from, they’re going to work in the customer’s application.

Steve Massie : Okay, the main components for us that we see moving forward in this market are sensors whether they be our MEMS products, or our photo products. We also see the wireless technologies taking off.

Roland Chapa : I think the key to our success in the industrial automation market for us is to continue miniaturizing sensors. We see a lot of requests for smaller and smaller sensing packages, and we’re also are trying to make them more sophisticated by either adding additional circuitry or making them easily adaptable to other systems.

Additionally, in the area of visible LED lighting for illumination, I think there’s a lot of opportunities for us. It’s a brand new market and area of focus for Optek, and we see opportunities there in both vision inspection systems and in some of the specific lighting requirements for those applications.

Ravi Jain : In the enclosures area, we see a move toward plastics and lately we’ve also been seeing some preference for fiberglass by industry regulators.

And from an application point of view, many of you have been looking for smaller and smaller enclosures with ability to monitor what’s going on inside the enclosure. As a result, we’re seeing more transparent plastic type enclosures coming in the market. As you can see in products such as the USB memory sticks and others like that, many companies are offering their products in enclosures made of transparent or translucent plastics.

RoHS is a big issue. We have taken steps to be in compliance on most of our products yet we continue to see challenges in raw materials.. Our customers are now requiring RoHS compliant products.

And of course in the automation area, there is a need for environmentally sealed smaller and stronger enclosures. As such, the demand for sealed die-cast aluminum enclosures is also growing very fast; that’s what most of the people are looking for.

In addition, as some have emphasized, most of our customers are now looking for off-the-self items. In the enclosures industry, we are trying to come up with new products that would be available off-the-shelf for many different types of applications.

Joel Shapiro : In a lot of our conversation today, we’ve talked about FPGAs and how much they’re being used, and we’re seeing a lot of machine builders and industrial automation builders using custom circuitry. Ultimately, that is addressing a need in the marketplace for an off-the-shelf tool that combines the kind of software processing found in a PC with a real-time operating system, with the reliability and ruggedness of a PLC with a good rugged form factor. And that’s the need we addressed with CompactRIO.

Equal in importance to hardware platforms, however, is the development tools you use to program them. We’re really trying to lower the entry point for people who need to develop these systems by providing a system-level tool, based on LabVIEW, that takes a data- flow methodology and graphical programming and applies it so users can do analysis, real-time programing, and FPGA programing in a single environment.

We’re just trying to let more users develop these systems, without having to go through the pain that’s associated with delivering custom hardware performance and having to use multiple boxes to address all the different needs in their systems. ■