Ahhh! Singapore…the Paradise of Asia
"Take off your shoes, please” was the polite reminder from our SE Asia Regional Director Spencer right as we walked in the control room building of one of the refineries on
Jurong Island. Yes. No shoes allowed in the control room. The reason? To keep out dust particles. Let’s just say wearing sandals to a control room isn’t quite the same as a walk on the beach. Minor inconvenience but definitely understood.
Welcome to Singapore!
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Entering Singapore through the Changi airport is like walking into a meticulously manicured garden with beautiful orchids, varieties of soft glowing palm trees, perennial flowers and tropical plants everywhere. The trees are pruned to perfection resembling symmetrically shaped umbrellas decorating a cold cocktail. T
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he streets are clean; as clean a shopping mall.
Singapore is a city state of order and organization. The highly educated people of Singapore are hard working, very polite and extremely disciplined. But apparently, it wasn’t always like that in Singapore.
On the way to visit a few of PAS’s long time customers in Jurong Island - a man-made island that is hub to industrial complexes employing over 100,000
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workers - our man Spencer gave us a brief background on the recent
history of Singapore. According to him, the rapid progress for Singapore began when she gained independence from colonial control post world war II. A sense of national pride, strong leadership and a set of strict rules (sometimes criticized as too harsh) seems to have transformed the character of this young nation in less than fifty years.
And speaking of transformation, it appears our panel of industry executives assembled to discuss the aging workforce at the PAS Users Conference in two weeks is attracting a lot of attention. Registration to our conference is up by 18% compared to the same time last year. There is a lot of excitement these days at PAS with the marketing team organizing to have the best PAS UC ever.
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At center stage at this year’s conference will be an integrated demo of our solutions to address the very challenge of the aging workforce and skills gap. Plants can now capture the most complex knowledge about plant production, which reside in automation systems in PAS’s Integrity (DOC3000/DOC4000) software for everyone to everyone. I was told by a customer here in Singapore this week that our DOC4000 software helped them simplify the way they manage their control system and allowed their control and systems engineers to improve their productivity by more than 30%. Think about it. That is, if you have a group of seven engineers, you just increased the output of the team by two headcounts simply by enabling them to get their job done faster and with higher accuracy by using Integrity software.
Now that is a clever way to deal with the aging workforce and the shrinking pool of automation experts.
What do you think about that? Drop me a comment. Let me know what you think.
Aging Workforce Concerns Dominate Honeywell Users Group in Land Down Under
(I am writing the next few blogs while Roland is in Italy with his entire family for a well-deserved extended vacation. These are big "blog shoes" I am going to try and fill...so wish me luck. Eddie)
After a grueling 36-hour commute via Moscow (yes, via Moscow) and Singapore, I made it to Perth, Australia mid-afternoon Saturday. It’s in the middle of winter here down under, and the sunny and cool (60 Deg F) weather in Perth was much appreciated coming from the hot and humid (98 Deg F and 90% humidity) Houston. The four-mile run before dinner did magic in helping overcome the flight fatigue – at least temporarily.
Catching up with old friends from Worsley, Alcoa, LyondellBassell, Honeywell and others was great. Lots of comments from various customers on the value they get out of our DOC3000 and DOC4000 products. One mining company client mentioned that nowadays it’s not just the control/DCS engineers who rely on DOC4000 to get their daily tasks done but that their operators also use it to understand control strategies and the logic in their control systems.
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The conference is well attended and high energy, unassuming and fun – very Australian, of course. The presentations are also high quality. The one topic that keeps coming up in almost every presentation and every session is the aging workforce, which incidentally happened to be the topic of my presentation as well as a major topic at our own PAS Users Conference later in September. In fact, I must humbly report that my session was standing room only and ended up moving to the hallway afterwards with lots of comments, questions and concerns. Just like in the US, the
Aussies can’t seem to get enough skilled workers to fulfill their healthy appetite either.
The discussion on the aging workforce was fast-paced and interactive. We discussed the magnitude and the root causes of the problem. We also highlighted the importance of the role of the console operator knowledge worker, what’s in automation systems (from process chemistry know-how to complex control strategies and safe operating limits and alarms), the valuation of these systems, how to manage and protect the configuration in them and more…
There were specific recommendations beyond the obvious in recruiting best practices including:
- Develop a plan, obtain executive sponsorship and communicate to stakeholders
- Retain the talent you have
- Recognize and reward good performance
- Provide intellectual challenge
- Make it a fun place to work and provide competitive compensation
- Re-engage talented retirees
- Implement DOC4000 (Integrity) to capture the knowledge in your Automation Assets and to create a platform for knowledge sharing and collaboration
Several existing DOC4000 users chimed in with the value they are getting from their application and how it practically contains and exposes in a simple format all the knowledge associated with process operations and controls.
And here is what an ops manager who was seeing a demo of DOC4000 for the first time had to say about the application: “I think it (DOC4000) is going to make a radical change in how we manage our business…once we show this to our operators, they will gain a totally new perspective into their process operations and control.”
Meanwhile, our young DOC4000 Jedi Dan D. has been busy in the demo area…his has been the busiest booth at the show. He definitely deserves a bit of R&R after this week.
So what do you think about this aging workforce issue? Is it a problem at your company, in your industry or geography? Drop me a note. Let me know.
Cheers Mates!
PS - the only regret about being down here this week is that I missed the twins’ first day back to school as well as celebrating my grandson MD’s first week anniversary.
(I am writing the next few blogs while Roland is in Italy with his entire family for a well-deserved extended vacation. These are big "blog shoes" I am going to try and fill...so wish me luck. Eddie)
My long anticipated business trip to Australia and SE Asia was unexpectedly interrupted earlier this week as I was literally packing the night before the flight. The call came Monday evening that my older daughter had gone into delivery four weeks ahead of the projected due date.
We spent much of that evening and the following day at the hospital with my daughter and the anxious soon-to-be father. All the hard work by the young mom eventually paid off and the baby, let’s call him MD, was finally here. MD weighed in at 6 lb 12 oz, 19” long and was irresistibly precious, like all newborns. What a phenomenal afternoon…there is a certain realization about one’s grown children becoming parents themselves.
Both mom and baby are doing well thanks to the excellent care from the professional staff at the local medical center.
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Once the excitement settled and MD was taken for observation, I could not help but think about what the little man had just been through. His whole world had suddenly turned upside down. Here he was tightly cuddled in his pitch black world surrounded by soft and friendly embryonic fluids at a constant temperature and comforted by the soothing thump thump of his mother’s heart beat, and suddenly, without warning, he is squeezed and yanked at the same time, his eyes are exposed to intense light in the delivery room, his skin is surrounded by dry and cold air and the constant and comforting beat of mom’s heart is nowhere to be heard.
Talk about change. The good thing is, we all experienced this traumatic change when we were born, and I doubt any change we ever experience can be as drastic.
Change is a fundamental element of all progress. Embrace it. Champion it. Manage it.
(I am writing the next few blogs while Roland is in Italy with his entire family for a well-deserved extended vacation. These are big "blog shoes" I am going to try and fill...so wish me luck. Eddie Habibi)
The new phrase I keep hearing these days is "50 is the new 30." Is this just the wishful thinking of some of us baby boomers or is there some truth to it? Is it possible to turn back the clock on the aging process?
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Possible or not, fighting the physical and the health-related effects of aging is something most of us think about – and some of us do something about.
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I happen to personally know someone who is doing the best he can to counter the impact of aging. Yes, in fact that individual is none other than our own President and COO, Mr. Roland Heersink, who will be turning 50 in just a few short months. Over the last year or so, Roland has been on a strict fitness mission preparing for his family vacation.
If you know Roland, you know how driven and competitive he can be. Well, when they planned the family vacation earlier this year, Roland set out a goal for himself to be the fittest (baby boomer) on the fine beaches
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of the Mediterranean. So over the last few months, Roland kicked it up a notch and intensified his workouts, and by the time he was leaving for vacation you could see the new and improved Roland. He even claimed to have developed his “six pack” abs. (More than we wanted to know, of course.)
So, how do you measure aging and how do you slow the process? An entire
anti-aging industry is developing and billions are invested every year toward the secrets of and the counter-measures to aging. Occasionally, we hear claims of a “silver bullet” to slow, and sometimes to even reverse, the aging process. But like anything else in life, if it sounds too good to be true…it is.
Age can be measured in different ways: chronologically, biologically, physically and emotionally. Regarding the first two, unless you can find a time-machine or are willing to mess around with the human DNA, there is nothing any of us can do to slow down time or the aging of our cells naturally. The other two – physical and emotional – we have some control over. In fact, these two measures of aging are quite interactive and difficult to decouple from one-another.
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Exercise and a healthy diet go a long way toward physical and emotional fitness. While we can’t control the passage of time or the aging of our cells, we can have total control over what we eat and how much exercise we get.
Even if 50 isn’t exactly the new 30, being fit and healthy has proven to extend the longevity and the quality of life…and that in itself is worth the effort.
So, let’s wish Roland a fun-filled vacation and hope that the baby-boomer-babes on the Italian beaches are not bothering him to much…