Tell me a little about yourself and something about your work experience
 I completed my studies in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pretoria in 1995, following which I worked as an engineer in the mining industry with BHP Billiton and Northwest Applied Technology. My main job function was to do product design and analysis for mechanical equipment in the mining industry. I then joined MSC-Africa as an engineering consultant where I spent about 5 years as a technical specialist for the MSC suite of products. During this time I was appointed as the Technical Director and took over the responsibility for the strategic technical direction of the company. Since 2002 I have been the Managing Director and remain responsible for the strategic direction of the company and the relationships with our clients. I am also directly involved in the sales and technology establishment of our simulation products within our local client base.
My main focus in the last few years has been to understand the requirements of our large clients like PBMR, Anglo American, Bell Equipment, Denel, Spoornet and Sasol to drive the expansion of the solution offering we have to be able to address a broader range of our clients engineering needs. This has led to us expanding our offering to include Fluid Dynamics, Multi-disciplinary optimization, Data & Process management as well as very exciting developments in physical testing, data acquisition and signal processing.
What is Simulation and Testing
Our focus is to help companies develop products more efficiently. The real goal here is to enable innovation through our technology. This is made possible through two separate and yet highly integrated disciplines, i.e. Simulation and Testing.
In short, Simulation is the use of virtual computer models to understand and predict the performance of a system without needing to physically build and test the design. This enables much deeper insight into the system prior to manufacture, which in turn enables the engineer to understand and optimize the design. Testing encompasses the broad area of actually measuring real data on existing systems. This provides the engineer with a baseline insight into the existing performance of a system, helping to understand its strengths and weaknesses.
Engineering is a hugely diverse field. How do you see engineering and how does Simulation and Testing fit into the picture?
I mentioned previously that Simulation and Testing are separate and yet highly integrated. This is how we understand engineering. Engineering is the real world of getting an idea to reality. This cannot be done with simulation alone, and the old approach of testing everything is too expensive and slow. By combining the world’s leading simulation and testing solutions together, we are able to really address our clients’ need to do engineering. We don’t get caught up in finger pointing between simulation and testing departments. We get involved in integrating these disciplines so that our clients can reap the most benefit from this technology.
Is South Africa Ready for Simulation and Testing
Absolutely ! We have many successful clients in South Africa who have gained tremendous benefit from Simulation and testing. With this said however, there are still many companies who are not aware of the benefits to be gained by simulation and testing, especially when integrated together.
Engineers are trained to always find better ways of doing things. This is at the heart of being and engineer. If Henry Ford’s Model-T was just accepted as being sufficient, we would never have enjoyed the engineering creations of Enzo Ferrari ! This attitude is being re-awakened in South Africa, with a strong drive in various industry sectors to strive for improvement and innovation.
This is where we come in. We provide the expertise, tools and energy to help our clients engineer better products, or structures or systems. This is why the world’s leading companies use our technology to lead the wave of innovation in their respective industries.
So Why Simulation and Testing?
A recent study by Gartner Research explains that companies which have adopted simulation on an enterprise level are more likely to develop a “Category Killer†product which will extend their competitive advantage over their competition for a period of 4-5 years!
The focus in the past was simply on doing things more efficiently or to reduce time and engineering costs during the product development stage. While these still add great value to companies, the international trends are that everyone is doing this already, and so the playing fields have been leveled again. For companies to exceed their clients’ expectations and to really gain a competitive advantage, the power shift has moved back to the engineer to do what he does best – Innovate. It is only through innovation that companies can produce those “Category Killer†products which change the rules for the competition.
Do you have any examples where Simulation and Testing really paid off for your customers?
In a recent situation with a major mining house for example, we were able to reduce the engineering effort to understand the fatigue loading on a large mining dump truck from six months down to two weeks. This was only made possible through an integrated solution of physically testing the dump truck in operation and using the data to optimize the simulation model parameters to be able to simulate the real loading conditions of the vehicle. The complexity of doing such real world correlation and optimization was previously not possible or would have taken too long. Our solution enabled this client to change the game with respect to this kind of high value problem solving tasks.
Another example is where we have used our technology to integrate a whole range of highly specialized engineering tools into an automated process for doing design and analysis. This project delivered a solution which was able to reduce the time to do a full design iteration from two weeks to less than 1 day. This has now become the catalyst for innovation, since the number of design iterations and options for consideration has increased by a factor of 20.
In a final example, we recently helped a large tubing manufacturer to understand the details of a highly complex manufacturing process without the need for physically running a batch of prototypes. The simulation showed that the proposed tooling designs would not have worked, and that a much more efficient way of producing the product was possible. This not only saves the company hundreds of thousands of Rand in tooling and production downtime costs, but resulted in a more robust manufactured product which will give them a huge market advantage over their competitors.
Tell me about ESTEQ Engineerings Vision as it Relates to Simulation and Testing.
Our mission at Esteq Engineering is to create sustainable value for our customers by empowering them to:
- innovate,
- increase insight into their products and environments,
- improve engineering efficiency and
- reduce their time to value
… through Partnered Engineering Solutions
We have proven this over the years as we have helped many South African companies deliver high quality products, which are safer and meet ever increasing pressures from international competition.
We are not standing still either. Our successful relationships with our clients continues to increase the pressure on Esteq Engineering to come up with better tools and best practices to help our clients succeed. Our clients are using our technology to not only equal that of international competitors, but in many cases to lead the world in various industries. From nuclear power generation to landmine
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