Desmond Teo,
Director of Business Leadership,
Asia Pacific Region
Dear readers,
This edition focuses on the theme of “There is no end to learning” and
so I would like to start my thought process with a simple quote:
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors
Henry Ford wrote this simple and yet powerful message on the art of
learning as a never ending experience for everybody, be it a young
colleague who has just started out on his working life with Festo or a more
skilled employee with a working experience of over 30 years. The desire to
continue learning and the passion for new knowledge in any form or shape
must become part of our daily life. This could be learning technical
knowledge related to our products, applications or solutions offered by
Festo Didactic Learning Centers or “soft skills“ as taught by the Fit for
Change program or Leadership management skills; the principle remains
the same.
Today there is no known method to determine our desire to learn as
each one of us behaves very differently depending, for example, on our
education, our upbringing, our cultural setting, our generation, etc. Yet
people who seek continuous learning tend to be more “open minded”,
are often good listeners and more patient.
When we stop learning, we risk becoming complacent in our work, our
behaviour and attitude change for the worse and will eventually be seen
as unsupportive and uncooperative.
This brings me to another famous quote that I have always treasured.
It is a phrase from Confucius, a renowned ancient Chinese philosopher:
I hear, I know; I see, I remember; I do, I understand.
The phrase is in Mandarin and translated directly into English. These few
simple words embody the whole meaning of continuous learning and
improvement. Only by actually doing the work (that is through learning by
oneself ), can we really learn and understand the true value of the work.
On the following pages you can read about and enjoy many of the success
stories about Festo products in use. They range from applications for
Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) machines, a filling and packaging
machine for toothpaste to solutions for the water treatment industry or a
biotech manufacturing facility. All these success stories are only possible
because our engineers have a strong desire to learn. The drive to continue
learning makes us a highly innovative and technologically advanced
automation provider for our customers.
Yours sincerely,
Desmond Teo