The Cape Town branch felt at the beginning of the year that in order to deliver a good service to members it needed to fill key vacant positions within the existing leadership. The nomination and voting process was, however, poorly supported, but it did manage to obtain the services of two industry people to assist with key branch activities until the 2012 AGM. The new members are events coordinator Raymond Cloete and branch treasurer Izak Muller.
“Having a solid team where everyone is available and working towards the same goals is important to us as it enables SAIMC Cape Town to deliver on members needs,” says branch chairman, Selvan Murugan. “The branch’s sole purpose for 2011 is to ensure consistent technology evenings as well as building close ties with learning organisations such as CPUT and Northlink College.”
Technology evenings during 2011
This brief summary of the year’s activities has been included to provide members with a history of the year as well as to thank our sponsors without whom the branch could not have fulfilled its purpose.
May – Ken Irwin from Motorman SA gave a presentation on robotics and its history and use within industrial environments. This was a welcome break from the tradition of conventional control and instrumentation presentations as was evident from the varied fields of expertise in the audience.
July – Evan Willemse from Beckhoff Automation gave a presentation on EtherCAT, the open real-time Ethernet platform developed by Beckhoff. EtherCAT sets new standards for real-time performance and topology flexibility and was therefore considered an excellent technology topic for members.
August – Gary Friend from Extech Safety Systems gave a presentation on intrinsic safety. IS is the preferred protection technique for many instrumentation installations within hazardous environments and the content of this presentation by Gary was extremely informative. The presentation looked at the origins and principles of IS, including hazardous area zoning and the implications for dusty environments.
September – Gareth Davies from CBI Electric gave a presentation on the past and future of automation engineering. The engineering of automation systems has been evolving for a number of years, starting with simple automation systems such as looms and punched card machines to today’s sophisticated DCS and PLC hybrid systems. The actual engineering and deployment of these systems from a business view point, where systems need to be deployed in a fraction of the time normally acceptable, was perceived as a great topic by members. Gareth provided a thought provoking session that focused on engineering standards, evolution, usage and methodologies used in the selection and deployment of systems and the focus on real world tools to cater for current and future engineering environments.
October – Nico Marneweck from Yokogawa SA gave a presentation on methods to combat the skills shortage. Yokogawa SA has developed a 3-year internship model that the organisation would like to share with SAIMC members, particularly members who are part of learning institutions. Yokogawa has battled to find appropriately skilled people to employ in South Africa and thus implemented this novel approach in order to produce the skilled human resources they require.
Site visit to Simons Town naval base
An initiative is underway to arrange a site visit to the naval base in Simons Town during the week of 14-18 November. The naval base has agreed to accommodate us within this week to view automation in operation at the navy.
General
Members are requested to update their contact details (especially cellphone numbers) in order to be kept informed about branch activities. We also urge our members to communicate directly with the branch leadership in order to voice opinions, direct queries and make requests for improvement. The leadership is there to serve members, but needs members to contribute towards this initiative.
The 2012 AGM process will be underway shortly.
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.saimc.co.za |
| Articles: | More information and articles about SAIMC |
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