It is interesting to live in these times when the Web is changing so many things. Our whole social structure is being influenced by it and this spins off onto our private and business lives.
At a meeting the other day an experienced blogger was talking about the demise of privacy - not in wistful tones, just as a fact. No longer is it just private individuals who have their diaries on the Internet for all to see - businesses are also moving in that direction. Cooperative models and information sharing are the order of the day. Anything that is posted to the Web is there forever - you might delete a blog entry that was posted too hastily, but you can be sure it is archived somewhere in perpetuity for others to read. Those cute photos of your baby that were posted to Flickr are still going to be somewhere on the Web when it comes around to the 21st birthday party.
Read Jim Pinto's column in this issue about the rise of women in business. It is generally accepted that women are better than men at working in cooperation-based structures, while men seem to be genetically programmed to favour competitive environments.
This move from competition to cooperation is patently apparent in our own business sphere. Look at the newly signed agreement between EDDL and FDL that was signed in Hanover this April, consider how Profibus has grown as a mutual technology initiative, read about the collaboration between Endress+Hauser, Rockwell and Spectrum Controls in this issue of I&C.
At a business and organisational level we need to be aware of these changes, their commercial and social benefits and alert to their impact. This is also true at an international political level. It is interesting to speculate on how a cooperative approach to US and world oil and energy needs vs. Middle East politics may have altered recent history in that region.
China is rapidly securing scarce resources around the world in this way. Sign a long-term supply agreement with China for copper ore and in exchange China will finance and build a deep water port for you to facilitate its export.
Growth in the Chinese control and automation market is beginning to register elsewhere. In May this year the 13th Profibus International (PI) Chairman's meeting was held in Beijing. PI recently reported that the number of Profibus nodes will exceed 20 million this year and noted that developments in the Asian markets, spearheaded by China, have been particularly rapid with above-average growth expected in China in the years to come. How is this going to affect the global and local C&I markets?
Closer to home it is concerning that we are not embracing a cooperative approach to address skills shortages in the local C&I industry. Each company and grouping seems to be doing its own thing. We have reported recently on Siemens' apprenticeship and training efforts, Alstom's are reported in this issue, Endress+Hauser and many others are each expending a great deal of time and money to address the skills problem.
I leave you with this thought - could these individual efforts and investments not achieve far more if we could adopt a cooperative model under the auspices of a single industry-wide grouping?
Andrew Ashton
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control andrew.ashton@technews.co.za
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