What industrial revolution?
When I was asked by Oratile to do the president’s address for this edition I was a little intimidated by the depth and insight of previous addresses. I read through the last few again and picked up a path of the discussion, I wondered if we are heading for a crossroad, or a cliff?
I thought of starting with the question 'Which industrial revolution?' as this seem to be quite topical at the moment. Many people have the impression that this is the fifth industrial revolution, and that the fourth started with digital and especially mobile communication.
I remember when I started at Siemens in the 1980s, I sat with a colleague engineer for two weeks to write a procedure document on how to get two Siemens S5 PLCs to communicate point to point using protocol 3964R. Thirty years later I can still remember the effort that we put in, should the wires be crossed or not, what happens to the shield, send command, receive command and so on? Before this time it was typical to use analog and digital I/O to communicate between PLCs. There are probably young engineers out there wondering what on earth I am talking about.
Later, with the advent of the digital fieldbus wars, we started to see the change away from how to communicate, to what to communicate. We needed to be concerned about network capacity, number of nodes etc., but in reality, with good engineering, it was possible to have any data anywhere.
In South Africa, or in Africa, the questions asked are completely different. Have we already had four industrial revolutions, or is this the first, or second? To answer this question is really not important and I am not going to waste time debating it. Most people today are satisfied to call this the 'Next industrial revolution'. I am okay with this – but my opening comment then could still have been 'Which industrial revolution?'
When the Department of Education (DoE) even considers the question of whether we should teach mathematics at school before the Matric year, you have to wonder whether our government has even thought about this discussion. I apologise already for making this statement as I know from our recent interactions with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) at the Connected Industries Conference, and subsequently at the Manufacturing Indaba, that they are thinking very hard on these questions.
I have recently reread the executive summary of our government’s national development plan. We have all the right ideas, but our implementation leaves so much to be desired. Without repeating the entire document I want to point out a few statements:
“... a country where opportunity is determined not by birth, but by ability, education and hard work/Improved education, for example, will lead to higher employment and earnings.../...three priorities stand out ... Improving the quality of education, skills development and innovation/Science and technology can also be leveraged to solve some of the biggest challenges in education...”
And yet our DoE seems to be on a different path.
So we at the SAIMC have an opportunity and a responsibility. We have made significant headway in our engagement with the DTI and we will set to working with them in a think-tank in how to survive and thrive in this next industrial revolution. We believe without doubt that if Africa is to be competitive in this new global technologically-driven economy we have a lot to do. We will need your support as the members of the SAIMC. We will need to engage with all stakeholders – government, education, SETAs, ECSA and so on. This is not something that can be done by a few – if we can mobilise the combined know-how and experience of the membership of the SAIMC then we can be an industry partner of the DTI, DST, CSIR and hopefully the DoE, to help take South Africa and Africa into this exciting new world.
Sincerely,
Rob MacKenzie
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.saimc.co.za |
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