Lean times ahead for scientists and engineers

By Patrick Raleigh, Editor, Process Engineering

London - Despite some positive global economic indicators, science- and engineering-based companies still face a tough environment and are likely to see a continuation of much more risk-averse decision-making, warns Francis Griffiths, vice president Europe at National Instruments.

"People having to do more with less is our perspective," Griffiths told a 15 Sept press conference in London. "Scientists and engineers," he added, "will have to focus on lean innovation and on increasing productivity, as the economy is likely to be down for some time."

Developing the theme of 'lean innovation', the NI chief said that R&D work is now becoming much more converged, with smaller teams and even individual engineers required to deal with many more aspects of a project than in the past.

"Engineers and scientists have to work with less resources and leverage resources that are already out there," continued the VP. "It is important to leverage networks and maintain a comprehensive R&D 'ecosystem' so you don't reinvent the wheel."

NI's response to these challenges is to try to take the complexity out of R&D and enable companies to "repurpose" existing equipment. The company's areas of focus also include rapid prototyping and exploiting multi-thread computing technology to increase productivity, said Griffiths.

And, despite the biggest downturn NI had ever seen, Griffiths said the company has continued to invest in R&D. Inedd, its R&D spend is now running at around 16-17% of revenues, well above its target 14% - though this, to a large extent, reflects a dip in company sales as a result of the recession.

Griffiths went on to announce the launch of LabView 2009, the latest version of NI's graphical system design software platform for control, test and embedded system development. The new version is designed to help users implement virtualisation technology that takes advantage of multicore systems. It includes new compiler improvements and IP that enhance field-programmable gate array (FPGA) design.

LabView 2009 allows users to deploy code to wireless sensor networks to help them build smarter industrial measurement and monitoring systems. It also features new solutions for testing multiple wireless standards such as WLAN, WiMAX, GPS and MIMO systems on a single hardware platform.