‘Pakistani engineers keen to learn automation’

LAHORE: Chris Marshall, Market Access Director, Rockwell Automation termed Pakistani engineering and technical human resource the best in Asia due to their keenness to learn and implement new technologies and automation.
Marshall, who is on his maiden visit to Pakistan to attend a hands-on symposium on Industrial Automation and Process Control said this while talking to The News on Tuesday.
He said the country was completely different from what the international media portrayed. “Pakistan ranked one in adoption of technology and automation in Asia while Pakistanis have massive hunger to install latest technologies and use it,” Marshall said.
The industrial automation partners Rockwell Automation and Avanceon co-hosted Pakistan’s first ever hands-on symposium dedicated to Industrial Automation and Process Control with a focus on virtualisation and smart technologies for the process and manufacturing industries.
“I will definitely come again and suggest colleagues and friends to visit Pakistan. There was some apprehension in the past to visit Pakistan, however when I told the security team that I am visiting Lahore, they gave me a go ahead,” he added.
Talking about the potential of the automated industry and service providers, he said that Pakistan was growing and the potential was tremendous. He said some Pakistani companies were pretty advanced in automation and technology. “A lot more will happen in Pakistan in the coming year, as people are planning huge investments, opening new factories,” he said.
He said automation was on the way in Pakistan, with every sector ranging from infrastructure development to oil and gas, sugar, food and beverages, and pharmaceuticals going for it.
Marshall said that Rockwell and Avanceon jointly organised the symposium with an objective to educate the participants of the workshop on how to capitalise on this proven technology, which was strangely underused in most industries.
He said that participants were provided an opportunity to experience smart technologies, including virtualisation up close. There were demonstrations at the newly-opened Rockwell Automation Demo Room at Avanceon’s head office in Lahore too.
This purpose-built facility provided customers a glimpse at automation solutions before they were enabled at their own industrial processes.
“We have a focused group of people. All keen to know exactly how virtualisation could impact their businesses.”
Bakhtiar H Wain, CEO, Avanceon maintained that the workshop participants would leave the day equipped with scalable solutions to drive their future business successes. He said there were no doubts that virtualisation can be a key cost and reliability driver for them.
The number of real business case studies and arguments in favour of this technology displayed would open eyes across many verticals a company operates in.