Engineering is shaping what the future will look like and is evolving as quickly as technology itself. This year’s highly successful Engineering Community Conference (ECC) hosted by ESTEQ at the CSIR International Conference Centre focused on how to future-proof your businesses, ideas, products and jobs. Hosted by technology specialist, ESTEQ, the event provided engineering professionals from a wide range of industries the opportunity to share their experience and ideas on the use of technology to develop better products and systems. Gold partners were Siemens, Standard Bank and Syspro, while silver partners were Aerotherm, Additive Manufacturing Solutions (AMS), Autoform and ASIC.
Delegates were held spellbound by keynote speaker Dion Chang, CEO of FluxTrends, who talked about the second wave of disruption. Citing four megatrends – robotics and automation, big data, cloud computing and mixed reality – he described different types of pivot that are already impacting business, and outlined the skills and mindset required for companies to leapfrog into the future.
This was followed by talks on digitalisation in South Africa and how to contextualise it in an African context by Edwin Severjijn, senior vice president and managing director EMA of Siemens Industry Software; Cobus Oosthuizen, CEO OF ESTEQ; and Ralf Leinen, senior vice president of Digital Industries, southern and eastern Africa.
This was followed by breakaway sessions where papers were presented by engineers from a wide variety of industries and technology applications covering specialised user-focused topics in the areas of digital enterprise, engineering simulation, product design and PLM, manufacturing solutions and test and measurement.
The highlight was the announcement of the acquisition of ESTEQ by Siemens and the signing of the agreement in front of the conference.
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