Mr. Salvador Bonifacio

Most of the qualified industrial engineers have been lured to work abroad and the Philippines is losing the best qualified engineers, said Salvador N. Bonifacio, Jr., Siemens' senior vice president for automation and drives group.

Siemens has recently launched its second Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) programming contest participated by six schools - University of Santo Tomas, UP Diliman, St. Louis University, University of San Jose Recoletos, MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology and Cavite State University.

Bonifacio said the PLC programming contest is part of Siemens' strategy to help increase the number of industrial engineers in the country.

He noted that many schools are now incorporating industrial automation in their curriculum.
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Bonifacio noted that industrial engineering is fast catching up with information technology.For instance, many companies are now using Internet technology or browsers for their automation programs.

Siemens has earmarked at least R500,000 for the annual PLC programming contest.The food and beverage sector is Siemens' biggest market for its industrial automation solutions and services.

Some of the major clients of Siemens include San Miguel Corp., CocaCola Phils., Unilever Phils., Pilipinas Shell, Petron, Caltex, sugar mills, oil and gas.

Bonifacio said that the R500 million industrial automation market is growing at eight to 10 percent a year but is five times less than Singapore and Thailand.

The low growth of the local industrial automation market was due to the absence of "greenfield" projects."There is not much large manufacturing plant projects in the country and no new industrial plants," said Bonifacio.