MESA conference success

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IBG - SA Instrumentation & Control Buyers' Guide

December 2011 News

MESA SA held its third annual conference at the Indaba Hotel in Fourways in October. The theme was ‘Innovation and flexibility in manufacturing execution’. It was the biggest MESA Conference to be held in South Africa to date, with over 60 registered delegates from all areas of industry. Returning delegates commented on the quality of the presentations, which they agreed was far superior to those of the year before.

The keynote speaker of the day was Craig Simpson, a lead analyst at IDC Manufacturing Insights, CEMA, Prague. He talked about driving business innovation through systems thinking. His presentation was full of valuable statistics and trends, and delegates clamoured to get hold of his material.

The rest of the day was taken up by the following presentations:

* Gerry Geertshuis from Eskom and Machiel Engelbrecht from Bytes PMC talked about the implementation of an integrated decision support centre for the Eskom generation fleet.

* Eddie Botes, planning manager at SCAW SWR, covered the Haggie Steel Wire Rope (SWR) scheduling and execution system implementation.

* Shueyb Vally and George Webster from Hulamin presented the implementation and rollout of OEE at Hulamin.

* Deon Smit, production integration manager at Eskom, had the whole audience eating out of his hand with an entertaining and valuable presentation on remote monitoring and diagnostic centre implementation at Eskom return to service plants.

The final talk was by Aleksandra Paton, a process specialist at Hatch, and Dr Kobus van der Merwe from Industrial Management Enhancement, on developing new performance measures to improve production process management.

The conference closed off with a networking session where delegates could relax, discuss trends and ideas, and conduct a little bit of business in a more relaxed atmosphere. The pre-conference MESA GEP training was held two days before the conference and was one of the biggest MESA GEP courses held in the world this year.

The MES/MOM skills shortage within southern Africa and globally is recognised as a major barrier to plant and supply chain optimisation and global operations excellence. Since the programme launch, MESA has experienced a remarkable worldwide response. GEP Programs are ongoing, and the next Bytes Systems Integration sponsored GEP CoC course scheduled for southern Africa will be held on 28 February to 2 March 2012 in Midrand. Other GEP courses are scheduled at locations throughout the world, and companies can have them at their locations or host public GEP courses at their site.

For more information contact Gerhard Greeff, Bytes PMC, +27 (0)11 205 7663, gerhard.greeff@bytes.co.za, www.bytessi.co.za

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