Some 65 teams from universities nationwide experienced a two-day final round of a contest for smart manufacturing talent in the Wujiang district of Suzhou, in eastern China's Jiangsu province. It proved to be an enriching journey for future specialists in the field of industrial automation.

The summer of 2016 has been the Delta Group's third time to host the Delta Advanced Automation Contest, a technology competition for automation applications.

Delta said the contest was designed to support the spirit of education reform and to build platforms for teaching automation technology in universities. It also aimed to generate enthusiasm among college students through promoting extracurricular scientific and technological activities in automation technology.

Delta, the leading international power supply maker, said it was also a way to invest in future talent in smart manufacturing and automation. It said the sector has witnessed growing interest from university students about the potential for future automation development.

Automation is one of the keywords of China's industrial development roadmap. In 2015, China set out a plan to upgrade its manufacturing sector, which is known as Made In China 2025, a 10-year program that aims to boost China's manufacturing sector to take its place among world's top ones by taking advantage of the internet of things, cloud computing, and big data, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Contest judges said they were impressed by the students' innovative ideas, particularly their ability to think out of the box, and use automation to create value.

Simon Chang, senior vice-president and general manager of the industrial automation business group, Delta Electronics Inc, has seen all the work displayed at the contest in the past three years. He said that he was pleased to see that young and innovative automation students were thinking out of the box, and had studied the market's needs.

"In several university teams' work, I see students are thinking of how technology can bring more value, for example by encouraging data sharing," he said.

"Or how automation can help generate data that can help marketing, branding and formulating strategy - such as a bottle recycling machine case that is not just an environment-friendly system, but is also a data collector for beverage consumption by a given community."

One of the top award winners, Xiamen University's Cloud Atlas Team, developed a customizable solution for laser engraving, an automation application that serves the demand for tailor-made products and niche markets.

The entire solution integrates the internet, a database, the cloud server, digital image processing, and motion control technology, in a new process.

(China Daily USA?08/18/2016 page15)