Keynote Speaker 1: Robert Canik Vice President of R&D for Instrument and Distributed Control
As vice president of R&D for instrument and distributed control at National Instruments, Robert Canik is responsible for the global development and strategic direction for GPIB, VXI, and PXI controllers and chassis; NI CompactRIO controllers and backplanes; motion control; industrial and serial communications; and NI FieldPoint products. Canik joined NI in 1985 and has served as director of R&D for instrument and distributed control since 1998.
Canik started his career with NI designing several GPIB and VXI interface products and ASICs. When he assumed management of the company's GPIB product line in 1993, he led a significant increase in the product line margins as the revenue grew. Similarly, when he took on the responsibility for the company's PXI platform products in 1998, he drove a major improvement in quality while shortening the time to market for controllers and chassis. During this time, he doubled the margins for the PXI chassis.
Additionally, Canik chaired the IEEE working group that developed the HS488 extension to the IEEE 488 specification and, as a member of the VXIbus Consortium, also helped develop the VXIbus specification and design guidelines. He has driven or facilitated the development of multiple processes at NI including recruiting and new product introduction (NPI), where he improved the development practices at NI by personally leading the hardware NPI team. He also helped develop the role of technical lead to improve the quality of NI designs by taking advantage of the experience of the company's more senior designers while accelerating the technical growth of newer NI designers through design reviews. Canik also improved the NI third-party reselling process by developing a business model and process. In addition, he is the inventor or coinventor on five patents.
