MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF SACAC
SACAC President's Annual Report: 2008
SACAC President's Annual Report: 2007
SACAC President's Annual Report: 2006
SACAC President's Annual Report: 2005
SACAC President's Annual Report:
2004
SACAC President's Annual Report: 2003
SACAC President's Annual Report: 2000/2001
SACAC President's Annual Report: 1999/2000
SACAC President's Annual Report: 1998/1999
SACAC President's Annual Report: 1997/1998
Engineering News Interview with Prof. I.K. Craig,
August 21-27 1998
SACAC President's Annual Report 2001
Presented at the Annual General Meeting –
12 March 2002
The year 2002 was another
successful year with some innovative initiatives gaining ground towards our
objectives of harnessing more support from local industry and making
IFAC
Our IFAC involvement
received a major boost with the election of Prof. Ian Craig to the IFAC council
for the triennium 2002 to 2005. This significant achievement of Ian’s
will stand us in good stead for winning the privilege to host the 2011 IFAC World
Congress. Ian becomes the second South African ever to serve on the IFAC
Council in its 44 year history. I would like to take this opportunity to
congratulate Ian on this well deserved recognition of his standing in the field
of Automation.
The next IFAC World Congress takes place in
A significant amount of
IFAC Technical committees are in the process of developing Milestone Reports
and Professional Briefs that are aimed to give an educated view of technology
trends in their respective disciplines. These should be available at the
congress in
Prof Craig attended the
10th IFAC symposium on Automation in Mining, Minerals and Metal (MMM)
Processing in
Professor Ian Craig also
attended the IFAC Council meetings in
SACAC Workshops
In line with gaining
increasing credibility with our international colleagues, SACAC successfully
co-sponsored the IEEE International Conference on Control Theory and
Applications (ICCTA'01) organized by the Singapore IEEE Control Chapter in
December 2001 at the University of Pretoria. This is a step towards SACAC
organizing regular African Control Conferences, which would help us build
capacity for hosting the IFAC World Congress.
SACAC also held a workshop
on "Interaction Centres" on Tuesday the 23rd of October. Interaction
Centres is the term to which Call Centre Technology has evolved to. Competently
arranged by Les Lange this conference dealt with the new technologies that
allow companies to facilitate interaction between themselves, their customers,
external suppliers or amongst their employees. The emergence of multimedia
(voice, data and video) capability with most network switches allows the old
Call Centres to be far more than a helpdesk like service. The workshop was
useful for a cross section of interested parties. It covered technical, project
management and business benefit aspects allowing the uninitiated to the
experienced a wide ranging view of this field of technology. Once again SACAC
feels it was another positive workshop building up the field of automation in
SACACs Robo-Soccor
initiative continued to gain momentum. This is primarily aimed to stimulate
students to choose Automation as their future careers and a medium term aim is
to convince the major universities and technikons to allow projects in this
line as part of the curriculum for 2002. A local Robo-Soccer competition is
planned for 2002/3, with the aim of sending the best team to the Robo-Soccor
World cup. So far sponsorship has been secured for two universities and SACAC
is still intensively involved in promoting this event under the leadership of
Professor Ian Craig. The
While the amount of
workshops held in 2001 were disappointing in number a number of exciting visits
are planned for 2002 including a Deep level mine visit and a seminar to debate
the contentious subject of Labour for Automation. It is imperative that we
increase the number of workshops and their relevance to our members, and we
need our members support in doing this.
Liaison with
Institutions
During the year, SACAC was
represented at the annual banquets of the SAIMC and SAIEE. This allowed us
strengthen our ties with these organisations, and we wish to extend our thanks
to the respective Presidents for their hospitality.
SACAC has been in
correspondence with Ms Anati Canca of the National Research Foundation, to
ensure they retain their focus on Control Systems as a main discipline. We
believe this is still their intention and thank them for their support to date.
SACAC has had very good
relations with the
Finance
The 2002 year saw SACAC
retain it’s strongly positive balance sheet. However with the IFAC world
congress in sight we need to build up sufficient seed money and hence need to
stimulate our activities to generate the income needed for this. The main area
of deviation from the budget was the lower than expected income from events,
more so from the number of events rather than the income per event. This is an
area which needs addressing in the new year and one where SACAC Exco has
already begun addressing by developing an event idea bank which will grow our
event schedule as these event ideas develop into feasible events. We also have
proposed the definition of interest groups so that we can successfully keep in
touch with member needs as far as events go. This is discussed in more detail
later in this report. These initiatives I believe will lead to a more active
event calender which will have positive effects on income generated and put us
back on track regards the financial plan to achieve the IFAC world congress
hosting in 2011.
I would like to take this
opportunity to thank our long standing treasurer, Les Lange, for all his
excellent efforts in this vital position. Les has during the course of the year
competently and effectively run with the job of managing our finances, and
especially over the last 2 years, through no small effort, together with the
JCCI team, Les has spearheaded the process of developing an efficient
membership database and invoicing system.
Publicity
SACAC has continued to
publish in Elektron on a regular basis. This included articles on the events
run, the developing RoboSoccor initiative and Prof Craigs nomination to IFAC
council. I would once again like to thank Elektron for the space that they have
made available to us at no cost.
The web remains
professionally run much to the appreciated efforts of Fernando Camisani. After
having purchasded the sacac.org.za address this is now operational and directs
browsers to the
General
On the whole I believe the
2001 year was strongest in the way SACAC began innovative initiatives to widen
its representivity and stimulate the achievement of long term objectives such
as the RoboSoccor initiative.
The nomination of Ian to
the IFAC council certainly stands out as a milestone in our objective in
hosting the 2011 World Congress and an achievement we as SACAC are particularly
proud of.
The challenge for the
future will be to mould SACAC into an organisation that effectively deliver
benefits to it members, one which I believe will be assisted by the formation
of interest groups in the different fields. The SACAC executive committee has
preliminarily defined 9 fields and will be actively looking to run these
interest groups in the new year. These are:
- MMM (Mining, Minerals and Metals)
- Automotive
- Chemical process control
- Electricity supply
- Utilities
- Control Instrumentation
- Automated software design
My year as president has
been very personally rewarding, providing many opportunities to make valuable
contacts and meet interesting people. In closing, I would like to acknowledge
the personal effort and sacrifices that individual executive members have made
over the year, and thank all the members of the executive and the secretariat
for their support that has made this past year a success. I trust that their
involvement has likewise been as rewarding as mine.
President
Mark Miller
25 February 2002
SACAC President's Annual Report 1999/2000
Presented at the
Annual General Meeting – 16 February 2001
The year 2000 was a very
successful one for SACAC. The primary aim for the last period was to
consolidate the membership and to build capacity in view of the proposed bid
for the 2011 IFAC World Congress. Significant steps have been made towards
achieving this objective and will be covered in what follows.
IFAC
The SACAC bid for the IFAC
2011 World Congress has been strengthened by a recent change in the IFAC
constitution, which results in a shorter route for an IFAC official to rise to
the IFAC president position, the tenure of which concludes with the IFAC World
Congress in the Presidents NMO country.
As a result, the World
Congress bid-process has also been shortened by one triennium. The South
African bid was therefore put on hold during 2000, but preparatory work will be
re-initiated in the course of 2001.
In order to build capacity
for the world congress, SACAC has proposed the concept of an African Control
Conference. Prof Craig attended the IFAC Council meeting in
Prof Craig continued to
represent SACAC at IFAC meetings, and during his visit to
SACAC also supported the
introduction of two new NMOs to IFAC, namely
The DECOM TT2000 on
"Technology Transfer in Developing Countries: Automation in Infrastructure
Creation" was held on 5-7 July at the
SACAC Workshops
The workshops continue to
be the main source of income of SACAC, and the 1999/2000 year was particularly
successful in this regard.
A total of 7 functions was
held, made up of 6 workshops and the DECOM TT2000 conference. This is
significantly more than in previous years, and can be attributed partly to the
15 month financial year of the past period, but more significantly to the
individual commitment of executive members, and to extensive planning and
preparation during the previous year.
Three of the workshops,
namely the Workshop on Information Technology vs Traditional Control and
Automation Systems – where is the balance? (29 October 1999), Emerging
and Converging Technologies and Standards for Industrial Communications (17
November) and Workshop on Functional Safety: Safety-Related Systems, (5
October 1999) have already been reported on at the last AGM. Further workshops
were:
Colloquium on
Modelling & Control of Mineral and Metal Processing Operations
This workshop was a
collaboration between SACAC and the SAIMM, held at Mintek on 25 May and
attracted 70 delegates. Feedback was extremely positive, and the SAIMM is keen
to repeat the collaboration in future workshops.
Many thanks to the husband
and wife organizing team of Prof Craig and Prof Garbers-Craig.
Artificial
Intelligence vs Classical Control
The aim of the workshop was
to put into context the new emerging trends of artificial intelligence versus
the classical control techniques. The workshop was held at Mintek and was
attended by 26 delegates. In order to improve networking opportunities amongst
SACAC members and delegates interested in the field, a discussion forum was
initiated after the workshop. Many thanks to Joachim Schubert for making the
workshop a success.
Control Education
This workshop was held at
the
Liaison with
Institutions
During the year, SACAC was
represented at the annual banquets of the SAIMC and SAIEE. This allowed us
strengthen our ties with these organisations, and we wish to extend our thanks
to the respective Presidents for their hospitality.
Restructuring of the
Foundation for Research and Development (FRD) under the National Research
Foundation resulted in the amalgamation of many of the smaller Thrusts in a few
larger Focus Areas. SACAC was instrumental in establishing the former Control
Systems Thrust in the Competitive Industry theme of the FRD, in order to give
due credit and focus to the importance that control systems technology plays in
developing national competitiveness.
SACAC appealed to the
Vice-President of the NRF, Dr Gerhard van Groenewaldt to retain the control
systems theme and, as a result, the Control Systems Advisory Panel was retained
as a sub-focus area of the Economic Growth and International Competitiveness
Focus Area. We would like to extend our thanks to the NRF in retaining this
important area and giving due credit to the importance of control systems for
the long-term development of
Finance
The year 1999/2000 was a
particularly good year for SACAC on the financial front. The large number of
workshops in conjunction with a marked improvement in the collection of
membership fees resulted in a healthy surplus.
The loan of R50,000 to the
DECOM TT2000 conference was also returned with some surplus, resulting in an
overall year-end balance of some R217,000. Many thanks to the Treasurer Les
Lange who, in conjunction with the Secretariat, has improved on the accounting
system, particularly for the workshops.
I believe that we must
continue to build our financial base in the coming years in order to enable us
to finance the World Congress bid, and seed the organisation of the event if - or
should I say when - the bid is successful.
Publicity
SACAC has continued to
publish in Elektron on a regular basis. Besides the monthly column in Elektron,
we also published the IFAC presidential address at the Beijing World Congress,
which received positive feedback. I would once again like to thank Elektron for
the space that they have made available to us at no cost.
We have also bought the URL
sacac.org.za, and are in the process of pointing this to the SACAC website
hosted by the
General
In terms of long-term SACAC
members, the year 2000 brought some highs and some lows.
It was with great regret
that the passing of Prof Ian McLeod was noted during January of 2001. Ian was
the driving force behind arguably the strongest academic control group in the
country, and his passing is a loss not only to the
On the positive side, one
of our longest standing SACAC members and indeed champions, Dr Naude van Wyk
was presented with a SACAC life-time achievement award during the banquet of
the DECOM TT2000 conference. Dr van Wyk was not only instrumental in the
original establishment of SACAC, but was over the years the most steadfast and
internationally recognized champion of SACAC within IFAC. His continued
involvement and guidance has given SACAC a stability and guidance that has been
invaluable. Thank you again Dr van Wyk for all the hard work and effort over
the years.
In closing, I would like to
acknowledge the personal effort and sacrifices that individual executive
members have made over the year, and thank all the members of the executive and
the secretariat for their support that has made this past year a success.
Gunter Metzner
15 February 2001
SACAC President's Annual Report 1998/1999
Presented at the Annual
General Meeting – 30 November 1999
Last year I started my
report stating that 1998 has been a good year for the South African Council for
Automation and Computation (SACAC). This is also true of 1999. With the core of
the executive now ending their second term, SACAC has generated a level of
activity and continuity that will stand us in good stead in the years to come.
Internationally, SACAC has
raised its profile within the International Federation of Automatic Control
(IFAC) as a one of its active and dependable National Member Organisations. The
South African Function, held in July 1999 at the IFAC World Congress in
IFAC
Cape Town 2011
SACAC has managed to retain
the prominence it obtained in the eyes of the IFAC community through MMM95. In
1997 our intention to host the 2011 World Congress was officially noted by the
Immediate Past President of IFAC, Dr. Yong-Zai Lu. Our IFAC profile was raised
considerably in July 1999, when SACAC played host to the IFAC elite at a South
African Function, held at the IFAC World Congress in
The Cape Town 2011 bid
process was officially launched in the
IFAC meetings and
appointments
In July at the Beijing
World Congress, Gunter Metzner and I attended the triennial IFAC General
Assembly. The General Assembly is the supreme decision making body of IFAC with
the meeting following a structure similar to our AGM. 38 of the 48 National
Member Organizations were present in person or represented by proxy. As newly
appointed member of the IFAC Technical Board, I also attended the Technical
Board meetings and the IPC meeting for the Barcelona 2002 World Congress. I was
again struck by the goodwill IFAC officials have for
SACAC members continue to
be active in various IFAC Technical Committees for which they deserve a word of
thanks. In particular I want to express our gratitude to Ian MacLeod for his
tireless efforts as the now past Chairman of the TC on Distributed Computer
Systems, and for Dr. Naude van Wyk for his active participation as vice-chair
of the DECOM TC. Congratulations to Gunter Metzner who together with myself,
are the 2 new associate editors of the IFAC Journal, Control Engineering
Practice. Other South African editorial board members include Dave Hulbert
(Editor) and Martin Braae (Associate Editor). SACAC as NMO has also nominated 7
members to various IFAC Technical Committees.
DECOM TT-2000
Planning for the Conference
on "Technology Transfer in Developing Countries: Automation in
Infrastructure Creation", is progressing well. It will be held from 5-7
July 2000 at The University of Pretoria. After a slow start, paper submissions
have picked up significantly, and we should see more than 50 papers presented
at this Conference. Thanks to the NOC for their efforts in planning this event.
I would again like to appeal that you give this event your full support.
SACAC workshops
As is 1998, each executive
committee member was tasked with organizing a workshop. Three workshops were
held during the year, whilst various others are in the planning stage. Two of
these workshops were comfortably profitable, partly because they were held at
subsidized venues. SACAC also acted as a technical sponsor for the International
Symposium on Quantitative Feedback Theory and Robust Frequency Domain Methods,
which was organized by Ed Boje and held in
Workshop on Control
Engineering Education (UCT - 10 September 1999)
This workshop was aimed at
educators and other interested parties who are involved with teaching control
engineering (and closely related topics) to undergraduate and postgraduate
students. The purpose of the workshop was to exchange ideas on all aspects
relating to the effective education of control engineers. This workshop was a
great technical success with high quality papers presented. Financially the
workshop showed a small surplus, even though the attendance was somewhat
disappointing. Thanks very much to Martin Braae, Don Stepto and Jon Tapson for
their efforts in organizing this event.
Plant safety: how
does the "digital" age affect you and what are your responsibilities
(Wits - 5 October 1999)
To aim of this workshop was
to expose delegates to IEC Standard 61508: "Functional Safety:
Safety-Related Systems", and to introduce and promote the concept of a
Safety Lifecycle Model. The workshop was attended by 22 paying delegates.
Thanks very much to Nigel Burrow, Ian MacLeod and Peter Knothe for making this
event a great success.
Workshop on
Information Technology vs. Traditional Control and Automation Systems-where is
the balance? (Deb Tech Auditorium, Johannesburg - 29 October 1999)
The aim of this workshop
was to give delegates a view of what the impact of the current rapid
development in information technology on traditional control and automation
systems is likely to be. Topics such as networking, databases, web-technology,
electronic mail, programming developments and security issues were included.
The workshop was attended by 19 paying delegates. Thanks very much to Gunter
Metzner for making this event a great success.
Emerging and
Converging Technologies and Standards for Industrial Communications (Rand Water
Auditorium, Johannesburg - 17 November 1999)
The aim of this workshop
was to expose participants to the main technical principles of emerging
communications standards and to speculate on what and how Communications
standards and Technology will look like in the future. It was attended by 26
paying delegates. Thanks very much to Mark Miller and Les Lange for making this
event a great success.
Future workshop
topics
Besides the
DECOM–TT2000 Conference, various workshops are planned for 2000.
- Automation vs. job creation (Richard
Roberts)
- Artificial Intelligence (Joachim Schubert)
- Modelling and Control of Mineral and Metal
Processing (with SAIMM)
Liaison with
Professional Institutions
During the year I had the
pleasure of attending the AGM's and banquets of the SAIEE and the SAIMC. Such
events provide good networking opportunities and ideas for improving what we
do. I would like to express my thanks to the respective Presidents for the
invitations and their hospitality. SACAC has had a long-standing mutually
beneficial relationship with these two organisations, and my wish is that in
the years to follow our ties will become even stronger.
I also attended a strategic
planning session of the SAIMC. As a result of this session, Research
International was tasked with doing a market survey amongst the readership of
Tech News to determine how members and potential members of the SAIMC regard
the services offered by the SAIMC. Respondents were in general reasonably happy
with what the SAIMC has been doing, but felt that the Institute should be run
more professionally. This again raises the question of employing a professional
executive director to manage the affairs of the SAIMC. The question of cross
membership between SACAC and the SAIMC has hopefully now been resolved with the
SAIMC remaining a member of SACAC, which it has been since our founding in
1961.
I also had the pleasure of
attending the AGM of the
Finance
Many thanks to our Honorary
Treasurer, Les Lange, for the competent way in which he is overseeing the
finances of SACAC.
The finances of SACAC are
in a healthy state and at the financial year-end we had some R100 000 in the
bank. This excludes the income generated by the 2 most recent events. Our major
expenses continue to be the IFAC subscription fees and our secretarial fees,
with our major sources of income being events, interest, and membership
subscriptions.
A loan of R50 000 was made
to the DECOM – TT2000 National Organising Committee and hopefully this
amount will be returned with interest during the second half of next year.
One of our main benefits to
members is the sponsorship that we offer for attending IFAC events. During 1999
a post-graduate student from the
Membership
We have managed to grow the
number of active members during the past year due to the efforts of the members
of the executive committee. Some problems do however remain in keeping our
membership list current, which impact negatively on our ability to collect
membership dues. Thanks very much to Gunter Metzner and Jean McKenzie for their
efforts in this regard.
Publicity
The Elektron Magazine has
agreed to publish a monthly SACAC news feature. This feature, which has been
published since April 1999, typically consists of general SACAC news followed
by a short profile on a SACAC member. Thanks very much to Francois Loubscher
and EE Publishers for making this feature a success.
Our website at www.ee.up.ac.za/sacac/
has become a convenient source of information on SACAC and IFAC, and has
recorded some 1100 hits since 1 April 1998. It contains information on the
history and constitution of SACAC, its Executive Committee, Secretariat, a
President's Message, Members, an IFAC President's message, useful links,
events, and how to join SACAC. Thanks very much to Fernando Camisani for
maintaining this site.
Secretariat
During 1998, the executive
has reviewed what it requires from a secretariat, in particular as regards our
finances. The paper based bookkeeping system has been partially automated, but
some problem areas still remain. Les Lange, our honorary treasurer, is working
closely with the Secretariat on improving the current system.
SACAC Life-time
Achievement Award
During the last executive
committee meeting it was decided to award the first SACAC Life-time
Achievement Award to Dr. Naude van Wyk for his dedication to SACAC and IFAC
since the founding of SACAC in 1961. He was President of SACAC from 1965 to
1967 and has served IFAC in many capacities, including one term as Council
member. Dr. van Wyk can unfortunately not be with us today due to ill health,
and we will find an appropriate occasion to present this award to him. On
behalf of our members and the SACAC executive, I would like to wish Dr. van Wyk
a speedy recovery. Our best wishes goes to him and his family.
General
As in 1998, many of the
executive committee members had the opportunity to host the 6-weekly SACAC
executive meeting at their place of work. The meetings are usually followed by
some technical demonstration, which makes for an interesting afternoon. This
system works very well and I would encourage future executives to continue with
this practice.
Finally, I would like to
thank our members, the Executive Committee and Jean McKenzie of JCCI for making
this a successful year for SACAC. I wish you and your family peace and
happiness through the festive season and a prosperous new millenium.
Ian K Craig
30 November 1999
SACAC
President's Annual Report 1997/1998
Presented at the Annual
General Meeting – 1 December 1998
1998 has been a good year
for SACAC. Internationally, SACAC has maintained its presence within IFAC as a
one of its active and dependable National Member Organisations. Locally, SACAC
hosted 2 events which contributed handsomely to our coffers. It has also been a
year in which we have carefully looked at how we can improve what we offer our
members, and in which we scrutinized the way we do things. These and other
highlight are covered in what follows.
Liaison with
Professional Institutions
Workshop with the
Presidents of invited Institutions and Associations
At the last AGM, SACAC committed
itself to:
- Re-focus itself as the
primary vehicle for international technology transfer, with IFAC as main
sponsor; and to
- Serve the automation and
control community mainly via the relevant technical societies
With this aim in mind SACAC
started the year with a workshop to stimulate closer co-operation with various
Institutions and Associations. It was attended by SACAC members and high level
representatives of six organizations, the SAIEE, SAIMC, SA Institute of
Aerospace Engineering, SA Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Association for
Professional Managers in SA, and the Bio Engineering Society of SA.
The main aim of the
workshop was to start a unifying effort between the members of the automation
and control community in
Other than raising the
profile of SACAC and IFAC in the local professional community, the goal of
SACAC to serve the automation and control community mainly via the relevant
technical societies, still remains largely unachieved. Achieving this goal
remains a challenge for the new executive. The next concrete step that SACAC
should take is to ask for nominees from these organisations to serve on IFAC
Technical Committees. Such nominations will be requested by IFAC in a few
months time.
SAIEE and SAIMC
During the year I had the
pleasure of attending the SAIMC AGM, and the banquets of the SAIEE and the
SAIMC. Such events provide good networking opportunities and ideas for
improving what we do. I would like to express my thanks to the respective
Presidents for the invitations and their hospitality. SACAC has had a
long-standing mutually beneficial relationship with these two organisations,
and my wish is that in the years to follow our ties will become even stronger.
IFAC
SACAC has managed to retain
the prominence it obtained in the eyes of the IFAC community through MMM95. In
1997 our intention to host the 2011 World Congress was officially noted by the
IFAC President Dr. Yong-Zai Lu. In February of this year SACAC nominated three
of its executive members to serve as IFAC officials for the triennium starting
in 1999.
In July I attended the IFAC
Council and related meetings in
In September, a large
delegation of South Africans attended the MMM98 in
In October we were informed
that IFAC had officially awarded a Conference on "Technology Transfer in
Developing Countries: Automation in Infrastructure Creation", to
SACAC members continue to
be active in various IFAC Technical Committees for which they deserve a word of
thanks. In particular I want to express our gratitude to Prof. Ian MacLeod for
his tireless efforts as Chairman of the TC on Distributed Computer Systems, and
for Dr. Naude van Wyk for his active participation as vice-chair of the DECOM
TC.
SACAC will be sponsoring a
party for IFAC officials and South African delegates at the World Congress in
Preparations are under way
to submit a
SACAC workshops
During 1998 each executive
committee member was tasked with organizing a workshop. Two workshops were held
during the year, whilst various others are in the planning stage. The two
workshops were both comfortably profitable, partly because they were held at
subsidized venues.
Workshop on
Evaluation of Control and Automation Systems
This workshop dealt with
the technical and economic evaluation of control and automation systems,
including the measurement and evaluation of improvements. Different approaches
to evaluation, i.e. technical, accounting and productivity were highlighted
using case studies of plant upgrades, new installations and process
enhancements.
This workshop, which was
held at the
Workshop on Trends
and Issues in the Integration of Automation Systems and Management Information
Systems
This workshop dealt with
the real-time conversion of information from the automated shop floor directly
into management information. It was attended by 20 paying delegates and was
held at the Rand Water head office. Thanks very much to Les Lange for making
this event a great success.
Future workshop
topics
Various workshops are
planned for 1999.
- Control Education (April 1999 at UCT)
- Automation vs. job creation
- Knowledge elicitation
- Research on Fieldbusses
- IEC standards
Finance
The Honorary Treasurer of
SACAC, Gordon Broadley, left
The finances of SACAC are
in a healthy state and at the financial year-end we had some R135 000 in a
32-day notice deposit account. Our major expenses continue to be the IFAC
subscription fees and our secretarial fees, with our major sources of income
being events, interest, and membership subscriptions.
One of our main benefits to
members is the sponsorship that we offer for attending IFAC events. During 1998
a post-graduate student from the
The SACAC Website
Our website at www.ee.up.ac.za/sacac/
has become a source of information for the local control community with some
460 hits since 1 April 1998. We even had our first web membership subscription
2 weeks ago! Thanks very much to Fernando Camisani-Calzolari for creating and
maintaining this site.
Membership
We have managed to grow the
number of active members during the past year due to the efforts of the members
of the executive committee. Some problems do however remain in keeping our
membership list current, which impact negatively on our ability to collect
membership dues. Thanks very much to Dr. Gunter Metzner and Jean McKenzie for
their efforts in this regard.
Secretariat
During the year, the
executive has reviewed what it requires from a secretariat, in particular as
regards our finances. The current paper based bookkeeping system has been found
to be inadequate. Les Lange, our honorary treasurer, has made various
recommendations as to how it can be improved. We are awaiting a formal written
response from JCCI.
General
During the year, many of
the executive committee members had the opportunity to host a 6-weekly SACAC
executive meeting at their place of work. This system works very well and I
would encourage future executives to continue with this practice.
On behalf of our members
and the SACAC executive, I would like to wish Prof. Ian MacLeod a speedy
recovery. Our best wishes goes to him and his family during this difficult
time.
Congratulations to Dr.
Gunter Metzner and his wife Linda on the birth of their son.
Finally, I would like to
thank the Executive Committee and Jean McKenzie of JCCI for making this a
successful year for SACAC. I wish you and your family peace and happiness
through the festive season and a prosperous 1999.
Ian K Craig
1 December 1998
Extract of the article "SA Implements automation
best practices" published in Engineering News, August 21-27, 1998, after
an interview with Prof. Ian K. Craig, President of SACAC, by Helena Raats.
Q. A sector
characterised by rapid technological change and ever-increasing global
challenges, the computerisation and automation sector is a driving force in
international industry. What are your views surrounding this sector?
A. One can identify many
drivers of automation technology which affect the automation and computation
sector.
Some of these drivers are
more difficult process dynamics, stricter environmental and safety regulations,
increasing competitiveness and customer demands, and increases in computing
power.
With the increasing
globalisation of the world economy, these drivers have an impact on all
manufacturing concerns, irrespective of the country in which the manufacturing
takes place.
They also force companies
to use automation more effectively to improve product quality, repeatability,
and plant utilisation.
This fact is certainly
recognised by the South African industry, as new plants and significant plant
upgrades are, as a rule, highly automated.
Q. With factors such as
world-class standards and quality being the order of the day, how does the
South African computerisation and automation industry compare globally?
A. Automation in the local
industry varies from state-of-the-art in some of the larger manufacturing
concerns, to plants which struggle to maintain level zero and one automation
systems.
In general, the South
African economy still uses significantly more resources, such as labour,
capital and raw materials, per volume of goods and services sold than our large
competitors.
An indication of this lack
of efficiency is our 1996 ranking of 31st in terms of gross domestic product a
worker.
Q. In your opinion, what
are the main obstacles facing the local automation and computerisation industry
and how can these be overcome?
A. Automation is an
enabling technology.
It provides industry with
the tools to produce world class products, and to operate business processes
more effective and efficiently.
These tools are, however,
only as good as the people who use them.
One of the major obstacles
facing the local industry today is the education level of the workforce.
Skilled workers are
required in order to use and maintain complex automation systems effectively.
Automation systems which
are not fully understood by plant personnel are often not used effectively,
and, in the worst case, fall into a state of disrepair.
Q. Which areas have been
the growth areas for these sectors? What do you envisage as we enter the next
millennium?
A. The future of the
automation and computation industry is rosy indeed.
The industry received a
significant image boost from the Mars Pathfinder Mission in which the Mars
Rover, controlled from earth, performed significant exploration tasks.
This mission was the
largest Internet event in history, resulting in about 566 million hits during
the first month of the mission.
In future, more and more
businesses will integrate the plant automation infrastructure which includes
the distributed control system (DCS), programmable logic controller (PLC) and
supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada), and field devices, with
transaction-based systems such as enterprise resource planning and decision
support systems, through manufacturing execution systems.
This trend is likely to
continue as businesses are forced to minimise inventories and, at the same
time, respond more quickly to customers' needs.
It should also lead to an
increased standardisation of automation communications infrastructure, and open
architecture automation platforms, as end-users and system integrators demand
automation infrastructure which is easier to integrate.
Automation tools such as
robots are increasingly being used in non-traditional areas such as the service
and entertainment industries.
This trend is partially
responsible for the large increase in the number of industrial robots used,
from 680 000 in 1996 to an expected 950 000 by the end of the year 2000.
Q. Do you believe that
the South African training available in the field of automation and
computerisation is adequate? What role does Sacac play in this area?
A. Training in the field of
automation in
It is not just the
automation engineer who requires training: a multi-pronged approach is
required.
The operator who uses the
technology requires training, as does the manager who makes purchasing
decisions and manages the use of automation equipment.
Most universities in
Exceptions are the
These courses aim to
introduce students to the main areas that an automation engineer needs to
understand, such as technical processes, automation functions, and automation
architecture.
As is traditionally the
case, university courses in control and automation focus more on the principles
involved, whereas technikons concentrate on the technology itself.
Technicons spend time
familiarising students with the details of automation platforms such as PLC and
Scada systems.
SACAC fulfils its training
role by organising local workshops and international conferences, and by
sponsoring students and academic staff to present papers at International
Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) events.
Sacac organised the eighth
Ifac International Symposium on automation in mining, mineral and metal
processing, which was held at
A local workshop on the
evaluation of control and automation systems was held at the
Another workshop on trends
and issues in the integration of automation systems and management information
systems will be held on August 26.
As the National Member
Organisation of Ifac in
Q. What are the main
goals of Sacac?
A. Sacac was formed in 1961
by the joints efforts of the CSIR and the professional institutes of
engineering, computers and control disciplines to become the nominated national
member organisation for
The main function of the
council is to promote the science and practice of automation and computation
for the benefit and economic prosperity of the people of
To achieve this broad aim,
SACAC is involved in acquiring and disseminating information on automation and
computation by organising and participating in national and international
conferences, symposia and workshops on topics which are relevant to members;
maintaining a formal association with Ifac and other selected international
organisations whose purposes are similar; facilitating contact among
researchers, practitioners, users and suppliers of automation technology; and
establishing contact with relevant national and international organisations.
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