13 / 234
LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS
a
t the Governing Council meeting during the IIW Annual
Assembly in Montreal, Canada, in 1990, the incoming President, Dr Norman
Eaton (Canada) mentioned that the International Institute of Welding (IIW) faced new
challenges and opportunities in a time of rapid change. In doing so he introduced a new
vision for IIW –
Towards 2000
.
1
This was reminiscent of when, 10 years earlier, The
Netherlands delegation had a similar vision when it requested that IIW redefine its future,
at the Governing Council meeting in Portugal in 1980. The need for change received further
impetus following the appointment of Dr Felix Wallner (Austria) in 1984 as the President of
IIW. Wallner then nominated Eaton, a fellow member of the Executive Council, to become
Treasurer and work alongside him, since both these individuals were of similar disposition
and outlook.
In 1989 the Executive Council then decided to act more decisively
before the start of a new decade by disbanding the
Working Group (WG)
Commercial Strategy
and
replacing it with a new WG
Strategic Planning
with
Eaton as Chair. In assuming this role Eaton gave every
appearance that he was a man who had come to the
conclusion that IIW had to reinvent itself or it would
fast become irrelevant as a global leader in the cause of
welding and its processes. There was some expectancy
that significant changes were about to take place
when Eaton reported the provisional findings of
the first strategic planning group meeting to
the Executive Council in March 1990.
2
Accompanying the rationale expressed in the findings of this report there was a
feeling within IIW that it still had its roots in the past and had changed little since its
inception. This feeling, in fact, had existed as far back as 1976 when a certain degree of
dissatisfaction with the direction that IIWwas taking was expressed by the Director General
of The Welding Institute (TWI), Dr Richard Weck (United Kingdom (UK)), in his opening
address to the Public Sessions at the IIW Annual Assembly held in Sydney, Australia. He
Norman Eaton