Later this month the World Manufacturing Forum (WMF), which was founded in May 2018, will be holding its annual conference, in Italy. South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is associated with the WMF and CSIR Manufacturing Cluster executive manager Martin Sanne is one of the WMF’s “ambassadors”.
These ambassadors have been appointed to spread information on the organisation and what it seeks to do – to promote innovation in, and the development of, manufacturing. The focus for this year’s conference is skills development.
“It is clear from WMF information that all countries are struggling with shortages of the skills relevant to the Fourth Industrial Revolution [4IR], and not just South Africa,” highlighted Sanne to Engineering News Online. “For South Africa, the international benchmarking that the WMF can help provide will be valuable.”
“A lot of 4IR technologies have existed for quite a while,” he observed. “The key thing is the way they are now coming together, accelerating developments, creating a kind of revolution.”
He stressed that the conference would be focused on manufacturing. “We want to focus on manufacturing in South Africa. … Manufacturing covers, or influences, almost every sector of the economy.”
The WMF also produces an annual report on world manufacturing, which is published before the conference and which provides the basis for discussions at the conference. Each of these annual reports has a different focus. So the focus of this year’s report is skills development.
WMF conferences are open to non-member organisations. “We’d like to see South African companies attending and participating in the Italian conference,” urged Sanne. The 2019 iteration will run from September 25 to 27.