MechChem Africa September-October 2021

Collaboration, 4IR and lessons from COVID-19

I t is now over 18 months since the full force of theCOVID19Pandemic caused radical changes to the lives and working practices of almost every community on Earth. It is no surprise that so many technical articles and developments are emerging as a direct response to the ongoing need tominimise the spread of this too often deadly virus. In a nutshell, reducing the spread of COVID19 involvesminimising person to person contact: hence lockdowns, working from home, travel restrictions and social distancing guidelines.We have all been re- quired to isolate at some level to limit the number of contactswehavewithpeople ‘outsideof our bubbles’. Science and technology were quick to step up in response. Initially with a treatment focus to fast track thedeliveryofhealthcareequipment,medication, PPE and sanitising products, but a massive data collection drive quickly kicked in to monitor daily global spread, while the use of virtual meeting platforms, Internet- shoppinganddeliveryservicesalsoroseexponentially. ThedevelopmentanddistributionofCOVID19vac- cines, however, is likely to emerge as the greatest and mostsuccessfulglobalvaccinationprogrammeever.On September 1 ‘OurWorld inData’ recorded that 39.6% of theworldpopulationhad received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine; 5.34-billion doses had been administered globally; and 40.5-million were being administered every day. On the negative side, how- ever, only 1.8% of the people in low-income countries had received a dose, which creates opportunities for vaccine-evadingvariantsandsodemandsurgentaction frombetter-resourced nations. ThespeedydevelopmentandapprovalofCOVID-19 vaccines, along with a significant number of different vaccines that have proved effective, is a remarkable achievement for the scientists involved. Also, though, production volumes – delivered in highly regulated batches due to the possibility of biological contamina- tion–arestaggering.Theworld’sbiggestvaccinemaker is nowthe SerumInstitute of India, which at the endof August,wasproducing150-milliondosespermonthof its version of the AstraZeneca vaccine. In a Minerals processing interview in this issue, Multotec’s Thomas Holtz talks about the need for much closer cooperation and collaboration between service and equipment suppliers to realise the true valueof Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technology. He cites the success of the development programme for Tesla’s autonomous motor vehicle as an example. This innovative success story, he says, is built on “an incredible collaborative ecosystem consisting of multiple highly specialised partners”. Collaboration is

Peter Middleton

also clearly evident in the development, production anddistributionof COVID-19 vaccines. ANature.com editorial fromJune2021says that,whilecollaboration between academia and industry iswell established, “… the speed and scale of achievement during the pan- demic — globally, 16 vaccines have been approved so far, with a further nine in full phase III clinical trials—is rare, if not unprecedented”. Holtzarguesthat “thetruevalueof theautonomous plant lies inproductionefficiencyandoptimisation: be - ingabletoextractthehighestpossiblemineral recovery fromthewholeplant, fromrun-of-mineore tosaleable minerals.” To achieve this, he points out, we need to be willing to form partnerships and alliances, share information and open up our businesses to a host of stakeholders, including competitors. In an article on UNIDO’s Industrial Analytics Platform, Alejandro Lavopa andMicheleDelera argue that, although 4IR is the product of technological advances, it is uniquely marked by a blurring of the boundariesbetweenthebiological, thephysicalandthe digital realms. “Machines ‘speak’ toeachother through theinternetof things,processesrespondtointelligence devisedbyalgorithms, andhumansengage inreal-time ‘conversations’ with mechanical processes through bidirectional interfaces,” note the authors. “What truly sets Industry 4.0 technologies apart is the novel way in which hardware, software and connectivity are being reconfigured and integrated to achieve ever-more ambitious goals, the collection and analysis of vast amounts of data, the seamless interac- tion between smart machines, and the blurring of the physical and virtual dimensions of production. Another of Thomas Holtz’ core 4IR messages is about people: “At the outset, I think we must make a case for the human being in this equation,” he says. The collaborative deployment of our scientific and technological expertise to cope with and then over- come theCOVID-19pandemichasput thehealthand survival of the peoplemost vulnerable to succumb to COVID-19 at its centre. This proves, beyond doubt, that science and technology innovations such as those associatedwith4IRare invaluable, particularly when applied to people’s real needs and imminent threats. Climate change demands that we again collabo- rate to overcome a real and present danger and 4IR technologies are likely to be a core aspect of this multi-faceted campaign, which will need to have resource, production and energy efficiency at its core if we are to sufficiently limit green-house gas emissions to avoid irreversible harmto our planet. q

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