Industry is changing. Digitization has brought about a new pace of work; timely problems can now be solved in the blink of an eye thanks to a constant stream of new updates, innovations, and solutions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in industrial automation.
As the Lead Business Unit — Factory Automation for Siemens in Chile, Fabian is responsible for introducing new products into the market. “Not only am I tasked with sales and marketing, but I also have to make sure the client knows how the product works for them,” he says.
The main way of helping people understand new technologies is through education. From his clients to potential new employees, he has to make sure everyone is up to date with the latest innovations. “As a business we’re always looking at how we can support new ideas and technology in the future,” he explains. “And a big part of that is education.”
One of the programs Fabian works on is helping students enter the WorldSkills championship. Taking place every two years, it’s an international competition that celebrates young people’s vocational skills — from telecommunications to industrial control. Founded in the 1940s, it was designed to create employment opportunities for young people in some of the economies that were devastated by the Second World War.
At one of the competitions two years ago, Fabian invited a school from the south of Chile to enter. “Chile is a very long and thin country,” he says. “So people from poorer schools in the south don’t get many opportunities to travel to Santiago, the capital.”
During preparations for the competition, the teacher came to Fabian and said he had a problem with his students not having the right skills or confidence to work with Siemens on industrial robotics.“I sat down and spoke with one of the students,” Fabian says, “and told him ‘Now you have to work like an engineer’ but his reply was: ‘I’m not an engineer.’”
Fabian asked the student to look up ‘engineer’ in a dictionary and he came back with the definition: Someone who invents, designs, analyses, builds, and tests machines, systems, structures, and materials to fulfil objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety, and cost. “I told the student that being an engineer was about acting like one, which he was already doing,” he adds.
Fabian knew he had to give the student the confidence and motivation to believe he was an engineer: “I told him that, if he won, I’d give him a job at Siemens when he was finished studying.” The student came in first place.
Ever since he attended university, Fabian has loved what education can do for people because of the domino effect it has. Educate a person and you change their lives, which in turn impacts their family’s lives, which has a positive impact on society and means, ultimately, you’re playing a part in changing the future.
Fabian Hernandez lives and works in Santiago, Chile. Find out more about working at Siemens.
Fabian is one of the many talented people working with us to make real what matters.
Photography: Franz Grünewald
Video: Mattias Matoq
