Primaries + Metals Industry 

                                                                                 

                                                                                Jenish Gheewala

                                                                    Industry Manager: Oil and Gas

Jenish Gheewala has been with Endress+Hauser since March 2001. He was previously responsible for the global Business Development for WirelessHART, and is currently developing the digitalisation portfolio for the Primaries and Metals Industry. Jenish has a masters in electrical engineering from the University of Texas. After studying he began his career as Sales Support Engineer, E+H India. In 2002 he took over additional responsibility as Product Manager for nucleonic instruments. He moved to the USA for higher studies with a focus on Digital Signal Processing and microprocessor system programming. Since then he’s done R&D on low power Coriolis flow meters, returned to Product Management of Device Configuration Software and hardware components as well as Plant Access Point. He has also significantly grown the solutions business in the USA, Mexico and OPEC countries.

Pleasure Mnisi

Manager: Business Optimisation 

Pleasure Mnisi, Manager, Business Optimisation Exxaro Resources Coal Operations. He is the leader for Exxaro coal business strategy, digital transformation and operational performance optimisation. Exxaro is currently the largest coal mining company in South Africa and a leader in digital transformation. Pleasure, is an internationally experienced change agent with over 10years experience in mining operations performance improvement (South Africa, Chile and Australia) and an internationally certified World Class Manufacturing instructor with five years’ experience in different manufacturing industries (France, South Africa and England). Besides his professional engineering experience, Pleasure Mnisi is a passionate active entrepreneur and industrialist at heart. He believes every leader of a large traditional organisation should thrive to make their organisations feel like a “Start Up Company” in order to create a culture that allows them to disrupt their operating business models and come up with new innovative solutions to improve safety, productivity and reduce costs in their organisations.

  

Dr Sohail Nazari 

Business Development Manager: Automation Solutions

Dr. Sohail Nazari has joined ANDRITZ team in 2015. Sohail has worked in different industries for more than ten years, including automotive and oil & gas. His current focus is to apply advanced automation technologies in mining and mineral processing industry. His areas of expertise include design and implementation of advance proc in 2013.  Dr. Nazari was one of the instrumental contributors to ANDRITZ team that won 1st prize in the Newmont/GoldCorp’s #DisruptMining competition with IDEAS Reinforcement Learning AI.  

William Basson

Business Development Lead (SSB)

William Basson has worked within the Mining, Metals and Cement industry for the last 8 years, specializing in management information systems. Post graduating from University of Pretoria with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering.Having been a key member in developing global mining solutions for Rockwell Automation, William engineered control systems across several industrials including metals, food and beverage, oil and gas. William has a passion for control, data and analytics in the industry and to see a global growth and success for Rockwell Automation clientele.

Nicolaas Schoeman

Nicolaas Schoeman holds an HNDT Extraction Metallurgy, B Comm and MDP from Unisa and Advanced Project Management from UCT. Nic worked for the Anglo-American Group of Companies for 26 years from 1979 to 2005, both nationally and internationally, with most of the latter years spent in a senior management role. His last position with Anglo American was as Business Manager of the Anglo Platinum Precious Metals Refiners. Before that he was Vice President of Metallurgy for Konkola Copper Mines and a Director of Smelterco in Zambia. Nic then spent 2 years as the Business Line Manager, Minerals and Metals, for Engineering and Projects Company Ltd, (formerly G-LTA Process Engineering). Nic then moved on to Barrick Africa / African Barrick Gold / Acacia, for 9 years in various positions including Director of Operations and Director of Technical Services. In September 2016 Nic started part time for DRA as a Snr Consultant, and in May 2017 joined DRA full time as the General Manager Optimization. In November 2017 Nicolaas was appointed as Senior Vice President – Technical Services for Minopex, the operating arm of DRA. Nic has authored and co authored several papers and is the recipient of 2 silver medal awards from the SAIMM.

Andrew Anderson

Andrew Anderson optained his National Higher Diploma in Electrical Engineering (Light Current) at Wits Technicon, and later completed the Management Advanced Program (MAP) at the Wits Business School. Andrew started his professional career at Standard Telephones and Cables (SA) Ltd (STC) in 1983 as a Trainee, following the training program he worked as a Development Engineer in STC’s Engineering Development Laboratories from 1987.  He then joined Ram Tec Systems (Pty) Ltd in 1989, as an Instrumentation and Control Engineer, performing not only Electrical, Control & Instrumentation (EC&I) engineering but Project Management across all the industrial/mining sectors. It was at Ram-Tec Systems that Andrew was introduced to Process Control engineering. Andrew then joined BRCS/AMS Process Control Systems in 1994 as the Technical Manager and later the Sales Manager for the Process Control Systems Division.

Andrew joined DRA in 1997 as an Instrumentation & Control Engineer and is currently the department’s Senior Consultant. Andrew was instrumental in setting up and managing the initial IT Department. He further initiated, assisted with the development and managed the Mine Operating Management System (MOMS). Andrew was appointed as the HOD of the EC&I department in 2010 and managed it until 2019. Andrew has been directly and indirectly involved in most of DRA’s studies, proposals and projects since joining DRA. As the HOD of the EC&I department he was further involved in the company’s senior management, strategic management, resource planning & management, office environment management, budget management, staff career developments, staff training and staff well-being.

Alan Strydom

Alan Strydom obtained his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Rand Afrikaans University (University of Johannesburg) in 1991. Alan started his career with Eskom as a graduate Engineer, before joining WSP as a C&I Engineer in 1998.  He joined DRA in 2002 as a Senior Instrumentation Engineer and has been intimately involved with a vast number of global projects across a broad range of commodities, including amongst others: Gold and Platinum.  Alan is currently the Instrumentation Manager at DRA, with a primary focus on Instrumentation Engineering within the group. Alan has been a Principle EC&I Engineer within the EC&I Department, mentoring the Instrumentation Engineers and designers within the department. Alan remains closely involved with project development and execution and has been a Lead EC&I Engineer for numerous large EPCM projects within DRA.

Water and Wastewater Industry 

Hennie Pretorius

Industry Manager: Water and Waste Water

28 years in the Industry, Hennie is driven by excellence and customer satisfaction. He is passionate about providing solutions to customer’s Instrumentation and process monitoring challenges in the Water and Wastewater Industry.

Thomas Schmidt

Project Leader

34 years old born in Germany,married with no children.Studied Electrical Engineering with focus on Automation and Control in Dresden, Germany worked 4 years for a consulting company in the area of engineering of power plants. Now, since 4.5 years at Endress+Hauser with focus on the Endress+Hauser IIoT cloud: Set up of  legal framework, Implementation and audit of security and data privacy measures,Product Owner for Smart  Systems (a combination of sensors and digital applications).

Sagren Govender 

Sales Manager: Sub Saharan Africa

Sagren Govender has twenty-nine years of experience in industrial automation including six years in the sugar manufacturing industry and eight years in the water industry implementing control and instrumentation projects. He joined Rockwell Automation in 2004 as an account manager. Since 2009, he managed various sales teams across Sub-Saharan Africa. These included the Kwa-Zulu Natal, OEM, Water Wastewater and Customer Support teams. Sagren is currently sales manager, responsible for developing Rockwell Automation business in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Eastern and Western Cape. Sagren holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration, a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelors Degree in Metaphysical Science (USA).

 

Wayne Taljaard

Managing Director : WEC Projects

Wayne Taljaard, Managing Director of WEC Projects, is a highly experienced individual in the water
and wastewater treatment and projects environment. He has valuable exposure to water treatment
technologies, processes, project management techniques and a keen aptitude for operating an
engineering business. Wayne has been instrumental in the resource management, technical,
commercial and contractual activities of WEC Projects.

 

Food + Beverage Industry

                                                                        

                                                                                  Anban Pillai 

                                                                                Local Industry Manager: Food and Beverage

 Anban Pillai has been with Endress+Hauser for just over a year. Having worked in various roles across the Automation spectrum, he had the privilege of understanding the full automation stack the integration of the various layers. He is an experienced Automation and Process Control Consultant with a demonstrated history of working in the Food & Beverage Industry. His experience in Automation, Process Control, Control Systems Design, and SCADA/HMI development has been gained from his 20 years of end-user experience. He has a passion for all things Automation and passionate about Innovation and the direction the  Industry is moving towards.                                  

                                                                      

                                                                   Herbert Makhubele

                                                                  Head of Sales: Flow Components  

 Herbert joined GEA in 1997, left in 2004 to work for a logistics company.He came back to GEA in 2005 and has since held various positions in the company, dealing with clients within the food and beverage industry and looking after 26 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Jayant Mistry

Senior Solution Architect

Jayant Mistry, better known as Jay in the industry, has thirty years of experience in Industrial Automation. He spent eighteen years in the beer manufacturing industry. Where he started off as an apprentice, before holding positions as a Senior Instrumentation Technician, Maintenance Controller, Process Controller, Project Engineer and Process Control Engineer. He joined Rockwell Automation in 2007 as a Field Service Engineer. Since then he managed the Field Labour and Training business unit across Sub-Saharan Africa as the Operation Manager and then served as a Consultant and Remediation Manager.

Jay is now a Senior Solution Architect, responsible for developing and assisting End-Users with their digital strategies as well as supporting the overall EMEA Sales Strategy. He currently holds a postgraduate certificate in Process Engineering Management from Brunel University London and is known for his optimization abilities in manufacturing.

Francois Theron

 Engineering manager: Electrical and Control Systems

Francois Theron leads a team of dynamic process control engineers within Clover’s development engineering team. Francois and his team are constantly evaluating technology implementations that provide maximum benefit to the entire company, from operators to senior management, while increasing execution efficiency. His 13 years of experience in automation, engineering and project management in the FMCG industry provide a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities within automation and connected industries environment.

Saziso  Nginda

Control & Automation : Coordinator 

He has an experience in the following fields: Control and Automation, Project Management, Systems Engineering Management, Product Design /Development, Solutions Architect, Business Intelligence. He has strong background of project life cycle management, systems engineering management processes implementation, contract management, systems integration & design process management, and systems engineering management plan development. Sasizo Nginda possess good ICT and Engineering skills (field device installation, data acquisition, real-time data monitoring, data processing, network communication and reporting). Good communicator both written and verbal, analytical, creative with excellent organizational, planning, and leadership skills.

Ravi Saroop

Head of Process Technology : Krones Southern Africa

Ravi has been in the field of Process, Process Control and Design Engineering in the Food and Beverage Industry for the past 24 years. During this time he has worked for market leaders in this sector and has been instrumental in the design and development of automation platforms geared for integrated architecture environments. Currently he leads a team of design engineers who provide turn key process and automation engineering solutions to the FMCG industry.