Manufacturing technology organisation the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) Africa will join voluntary engineering organisation the Society for Automation, Instrumentation, Mechatronics and Control (SAIMC) from January 1, 2023.

All MESA Africa members will become full members of the SAIMC, with access to all the resources of both organisations, SAIMC CEO Johan Maartens said on November 16.

Additionally, MESA Africa members will receive a discount for also becoming members of industry authority the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA).

Maartens noted that membership fees for joining both the SAIMC and ECSA would be less than the fees for registering only with ECSA.

"Both organisations have been around for about 15 years. The two structures and the personnel will be combined and MESA Africa, as a registered nonprofit organisation, will become dormant."

MESA Africa is forming an integrated partnership with the SAIMC – with the approval of MESA International. The SAIMC and MESA Africa personnel will work together but will remain focused on their distinctive areas of expertise, said MESA Africa director and chairperson Daniel Spies.

"Th[e merger] was done to provide increased value to all our members, as well as SAIMC members. MESA International started 30 years ago owing to the development of manufacturing execution systems (MESes). The organisation, and the local chapter once established, worked on the architecture and standards of these systems. The success of these systems has evolved to smart manufacturing today," he explained.

"MESA Africa and the SAIMC have been working closely for a long time. We have made available a special offer to all our members in MESA Africa and SAIMC to take advantage of the benefits of MESA International, but at a discounted cost," he added.

Historically, MESes were more monolithic, but have since been broken into smaller sets of functions that have been inherited by industrial edge-to-cloud and industrial Internet of Things systems in use, noted MESA Europe, Middle East and Africa chairperson Uwe Kueppers.

MESA International and its chapters provide members with access to professional resources, such as use cases, case studies and best practices to ensure that smart manufacturing activities are precise and structured, and that business objectives become business outcomes, he highlighted.

"The latest MESA model advocates that the business value of any automation, control and instrumentation projects be identified and defined to ensure that they drive the business objectives," he said.

"We need to think about business objectives in the beginning of any project to ensure we consider what is needed from a quality, regulatory or sustainability perspective in terms of the projects, and then ensure that we use the right technology to achieve the outcomes.

MESA has developed a range of support materials, and provides education, networking and professional resources to members, Kueppers added, encouraging engineers and companies to join the organisation as the technology use cases detailed in its resources are proven and can be scaled up.