Technology and knowledge – a story of two smelters

You may have heard the recent news reports that Rio Tinto will start to plan for the closure of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter near Bluff at the bottom of the South Island. The company said that a strategic review has shown that “the business is no longer viable given high energy costs and a challenging outlook for the aluminium industry”.

Whilst visiting that area back in 2014 with my family, I remember leaving the lookout at Bluff that provides a view of the smelter and returning to town to read about its importance to the local community, in particular employment for people both locally and further afield.

I was also interested to read of how on the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1996, the Tiwai Point smelter unexpectedly shut down. The vast production line turning raw materials into aluminium came to a complete halt. This smelter that normally runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, had stopped. What made this even more interesting was that two hours later at Bell Bay, Tasmania, on the stroke of midnight, the aluminium smelter there, also owned by Rio Tinto, came to a halt.

Why? What major breakdown in technology had led to this happening?

These two aluminium smelters use the most modern technology, employ highly qualified staff and are managed to work efficiently. Yet something happened on New Year’s Eve 1996 that caused this situation. The smelters are operated by sophisticated computer technology, programmed by the smelters’ own computer experts, who are very skilled in their field. Computers, unlike human beings, do not get tired or sick or careless. They do what they are programmed to do.

However, the programmers are human and they can make mistakes. When the Bell Bay smelter shut down, two hours after the one at Tiwai Point, the smelter managers of both facilities realised what had gone wrong. The computers were programmed to run for 365 days but 1996, just like this year, happened to be a leap year. Instead of 365 days, the smelter had to run for 366 days because of the extra day every four years in the calendar.

It struck me that there is a lesson here to be learnt. All our brilliant technology, all our efficiency and achievements depend in the end, not on computers, not on expert skills, but on possessing an appropriate level of knowledge. Knowledge is a key to success and an important pathway to wisdom. May our boys make the most of their academic learning opportunities at Hereworth, to appreciate the power of learning and gaining knowledge in order to give themselves a much better understanding of the world around us - in the words of Benjamin Franklin, “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest”.

Trevor Barman

Headmaster

Article added: Friday 14 August 2020