You're facing a career hiatus in Control Engineering. How can you enhance your skills during this time?

Widen your skills, education and qualifications by completing CCNA and IEC62443 cybersecurity training. IT/OT convergence is one of the most critical challenges in the industry and is a major area of specialism and expertise.

Also, some of the in-person local institutions can help to gain more hands-on experience related to control system design. Hands-on experience helps to gain required confidence to tackle more complex industrial automation related challenges.

Sorry can't help here. My hiatus was being made redundant on the afternoon of my 50th birthday. Fortunately I was head-hunted and had a lead to an interview while I was still clearing my desk! Because this was a slight career swerve I spent 2 weeks investigating the new company product range and areas of involvement so I was prepared for the interview and new challenge. So - decide in new direction and investigate all aspects and learn.qq

Reading is one of the most desired skill in the field of engineering. Answers to majority of problems are already present in some form of literature. We just need to develop that eye to find those details as required. Most of the OEM also publish some form of White Papers which includes some real-life sample projects using similar technology.

Along with knowledge of various PLC, HMI and SCADA Programming software; knowledge of variety of communication protocols is also critical to establishing communication links between various devices. It also needs awareness of some of the popular protocol analyzing tools like Modbus Scanner, WireShark etc.

Pick something fun that you want to do, that allows you to be creative. If that project ends up having you design something in CAD, creating a PCB, writing code for a microcontroller, and doing all sorts of things then that's only going to be applicable to your work in one way or another. But do something you enjoy, because burnout is extremely easy in the automation field. You are constantly the only person who can fix the issues that arise, and at some point you need to remember what got you into automation in the first place. Pick interesting projects, pick projects at the beginner level for something you've always wanted to do, like make a personal website. Just enjoy it above all else.