Message from the Chair

By Luigi De BernardiniLuigi_De_Bernardini_headshot.jpg

Greetings from your CSIA Board of Directors. We are getting close to the end of a very hot season (summer or winter, depending on where you are). I have the feeling that it has been unusually warm all around the globe, both in climate and business. It was for sure in Italy! I hope you had some time over the past couple of months to relax and recharge with your families.

It has been an intense period for CSIA as well. CEO Jose Rivera and the team worked hard to implement all the initiatives we have in place and to make CSIA a stronger and more resilient association and community.

Welcome Carolina Casas Anzola!

A lot of focus was on the LATAM initiative. I have the pleasure of welcoming Carolina Casas Anzola, CSIA’s new LATAM director. Carolina will be key in helping CSIA continue to grow in the South America region and, in turn, implementing CSIA’s globalization goal. Carolina has already been onboarded and is fully operative.

The transition to Carolina was completed very quickly with significant support from Eduardo Acosta, CEO of Omnicon and a former board member, who helped Jose in the last stages of the selection. This is a great example of how important working together is and how each of us can contribute to making CSIA evolve.

Digital Transformation Task Force

The Digital Transformation Task Force started its activities before summer and is busy figuring out if industrial automation SIs have a role to play in the digital transformation beyond their traditional role of technology implementation. This is a very key theme that we will analyze deeply during the CSIA Executive Conference in New Orleans next year.

Digital transformation is impacting our businesses in many different ways: technology, user requirements, internal and external communication. But we need to be very aware that the most significant impact of digital transformation will be on people. It’s modifying the way users communicate with machines, but even more, how people communicate with other people.

This creates a big challenge for companies to adapt to this new environment, including recruiting, training, project and team organization, and workforce management.

It’s a transformation that is happening very fast. CSIA can help all of us to be better prepared to face it. If you are interested in any of these topics, I strongly urge you to participate in the task force. More information can be found here.

Fall Happenings

If summer was hot, fall will not be different. A lot of events and initiatives will happen in the next few months as you will see from this newsletter: regional events, cyber training, trade show participation and planning for the 2020 Executive Conference, to name a few.

In short: There are a lot of opportunities for you to get great value from membership. I hope you will take advantage of them!

CSIA Chair Luigi De Bernardini is CEO of Autoware, S.R.L., in Vicenza, Italy.