At the April 2001 AGM, I was most honoured to be inducted as this year's President. I have been preceded by many eminent leaders in our industry dating back 43 years, who have guided our institute from strength to strength. I give my thanks to the Immediate Past President, Dave Howcroft, for his enthusiastic work in the last year. I am fortunate to be supported by a very capable group of council members and branch chairmen, committed to the further success of our institute.
By way of introduction, I would like to give a few comments about the industry, the SAIMC and myself. As a child in Lusaka, I found interest in electrical gadgets, then applied this to TV reception and music systems to make boarding school more entertaining, learned what was behind it all at Wits and, thanks to the support of AECI, specialised in control engineering at Cambridge. Called up to the air force, I was fortunate to be able to apply this to the design of air-to-air missiles. And then back to AECI Modderfontein, a 'learning organisation' ahead of its time, a massive coal-to-ammonia plant, and largest commercial explosives factory in the world, which was then probably the finest training ground in instrumentation and control. We worked on a wide range of technology from hydraulic speed/two-stage turbine control to emergency trip-circuitry. The latter reminds me of my colleague who was working on a 12 MW compressor's live trip-circuitry, when the whole plant shut down; the cost of shut-down and start-up being several hundred thousand rand. He asked himself after the plant had recovered, if the problem could possibly have been caused by him, promptly pressed the button and shut the plant down again! An expensive learning experience.
Those were the early days of modern adaptive, nonlinear and multivariable control in real chemical processes, so we had plenty of challenge mainly in the new half of the plant which was electronically controlled; the rest was pneumatic, where cascaded and feed forward controls were complex enough. If working in this fascinating environment wasn't enough, it certainly gave a skills-set employable elsewhere - one colleague taking his systems simulation interests into the financial derivatives markets very profitably, another becoming a patent attorney, but the boss who it is said became a medical doctor, returned to electricity and instrumentation at Modderfontein; that says something!
The industry today
Coming to the present, this is an encouraging time for us. Whilst our colleagues in Europe and the USA have got the economic jitters, we are seeing a gentle but convincing recovery in our local industry, both C&I and TMI. The former is turning up due to expansions in mining (zinc, platinum, diamonds) and food and beverage sectors. At last we will have SA brewed Weiss-bier, which is more cause for celebration! The test and measurement instrumentation market is more active across the spectrum, not only in telecoms, but also in power quality, and process plant, where smart calibrators and dataloggers are enabling extended plant life and production improvements. The closely linked field of metrology, in which South Africa has a high global standing, has also seen greater activity.
On the commercial side of the industry there is now a clearer trend towards catalogue/Internet sales of off-the-shelf items by both local and global intermediaries. This is creating pressure on our traditional distribution channels and could have major repercussions.
SAIMC
Regarding the SAIMC, most member activity takes place at branch level where we have had great success in the past years around the country, with events in educational, social, general information and plant visits. The interest and value created has brought in enthusiastic members who maintain the momentum; a good example has been the Secunda branch. An important aim for the council and branch chairmen is to learn from each other's successes and support the branches in their activities created and valued by members. At the central council level, sub-groups will continue to focus on education and training, grants, the Negretti award, associated institutes and bodies, membership services and exhibitions among other topics. Members' support in these areas is welcomed.
Lastly, to those readers who are not members of the SAIMC, why not join in keeping the standards and vibrancy of our field of technology... join!
Richard Teagle (SAIMC President)
(011) 971 5500
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version