There was no contribution from the president's desk in the last edition of Motion Control.
There is also no good excuse for that, other than the time factor. I have run out of time again, but Jaime Chan, the new editor of this magazine, gracefully extended the deadline for this third quarter issue and there goes my excuse. Talking about time and the lack of it, there are some people in our fluidpower industry that have very generously given up a lot of their time, and spent many hours in meetings and workshops, to create the framework and to write the relevant unit standards for a national fluidpower qualification programme.
They have done so successfully and the Certificate in Fluidpower Qualification was launched at the end of July at a breakfast hosted by SAFPA. At this point, I would like to extend our thanks and gratitude on behalf of SAFPA and all its members to this team of dedicated people:
Russel Gill of EHS (also SAFPA Council Member)
Helmut Schwabe of Hyflo
Lex Todd of Parker
Klaus Marggraff of Hytec
Horst Weinert of Festo
Steve Gibson of Ernest Lowe
Angus Beveridge of Hyflo Cape Town
Wayne Langford (Merseta)
Thank you gentlemen for a job well done.
Other activities
SAFPA council is working on restructuring our website to provide a more comprehensive service to our members. If any of you have suggestions or ideas, please call one of our council members or the CTR office.
The cost of living
Finally, an extract out of SA Mechanical Engineering that was published in 1977, as found in "A collection of Proverbs, Limericks, Wit and Wisdom" by Reyno van der Spuy.
"Living is inextricably linked with labour. The cost of living is the cost of the labour required to maintain that living. Human effort is the foundation of wealth and prosperity. When we look around us at those nations which enjoy the benefits of a high standard of living, we will inevitably find that it is the result of work.
The words 'work' and 'worker' have been degraded to the limited scope of referring to those who exercise manual activity. One cannot even include those with manual dexterity and skill, since these attributes are becoming a thing of the past. Real prosperity is built on mental achievement, ingenuity, skill, intelligence and leadership to a far greater extent than on drudgery. The great and prosperous nations of the present world now seem to rest on the laurels of their past brilliance and hard work. Some like West Germany and Japan, still maintain some of the impetus of their earlier drive and energy, while others have apparently forgotten whence their earlier drive and energy, while others have apparently forgotten whence their true greatness came, and have rejected the voices of their real workers.
Whenever one reads or hears of the achievements of the builders of a nation's prosperity, one is always impressed with the extent of the application and exertion displayed. Such men as Kelvin, Edison, Rutherford, Faraday - men of brilliance and genius - nevertheless all exercised, as one of them put it, '10% inspiration and 90% perspiration'. Their contribution to the nation's greatness was far deeper and lasting than the production of another motor car, or another bridge. These last are evidence of prosperity in a community, but are not inherent to it. Luxury is the outcome of an increased standard of living, but it plays no necessary part in its establishment.
Even the cost of raw materials is that of the labour to dig them out of the earth. A country rich in raw materials is indeed fortunate in having a basis on which to found prosperity, but it remains poor and ineffectual as long as it is unable or unwilling to supply the knowledge and labour to extract and use them. In the same way, a country rich in labour potential remains poor if it lacks the leadership, drive and willingness to employ that labour force effectively. Taking this argument further, a country which enjoys a history of power and prosperity is equally poor if it becomes unable or unwilling to continue employing the real ingredients of its past success, namely the individual genius and understanding which brought together the knowledge for building, and the application without stint of the labour to affect it.
In our world of enormous population growth there is less and less room for individual achievement, and equally less scope for individual contributions to community welfare. We tend therefore more and more to the concept of collective action. The emphasis is on groups, unions, teams, companies. We do not hear much of outstanding scientific and engineering contributors such as we had in previous centuries - Stevenson, Watt, Maxwell, Newcome, Diesel, Newton and the like. There must be many people of our own generation with the mental ability as well as the energy and drive, to match the great engineers and scientists of the past, but where are they? How can their voice be heard in this world of the masses?
Our concept of prosperity is linked, perhaps inevitably (bearing in mind that populations are now counted in billions), with mass production. Industries are successful when they cater for multitudinous consumption. Find a product that is needed and wanted by the masses, one that they can afford, or nearly afford, and success is assured. But in this lies the seed of destruction. A factory producing articles by the thousands, or by the million, cannot change and improve the product except by gradual evolution. In fact, there is built into the system a strong resistance to change. Whether this is desired by the more thoughtful members of the producing community or not, the latter have no means of overcoming it. The idea of challenge may seem a good one - to introduce a new and developed product as a competitive venture may generally appear to be the answer, but it does not serve because:
a) The competitor is crushed by shear numerical power.
b) The competitor and his product are eliminated by being swallowed up in a take-over buy-out.
Stifled competition is almost entirely the reason for lack of advancement in a capitalist society. And the inhibition of advancement because of bulk repetition required by multiple production is the basis of slow-down, if not a halt in development. Without development of business or an industry in static, and a static economy is effectively a retrogressive one.
Human effort is the keynote. But the prodigious progress of technology has done little to remove the monotony of daily toil. We have machines to obviate manual effort, but these merely shift the monotony to another area rather than remove it. Programming routines can be as repetitive and monotonous as the original work schedules they have replaced. An advanced technology is therefore not the arbiter of prosperity - there is still only one route, that of well directed and efficient labour. We must recover the stimulus of the individual innovator, who can show the way to others how to add each his own contribution, however humble, without mindless drudgery and apathy as mere units.
Should we complain about inflation? Have we not prepared our own bed to lie on by our weak acceptance of a faceless society? Do we not hide our individuality within corporate groups which toss us collectively around in our sea of technology in which we are helpless to influence the direction? The energetic and brilliant individualist of the previous generations are not to blame for the way we have reduced their painstakingly built foundation to a meaningless conglomeration of efficient machines, producing as much waste and pollution as value. Yet we continue to expand the size of our industrial corporate giants and reduce our own stature within them until they become Frankensteins beyond holding back."
That is it for today,
Fritz Kern
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