Marmara Fuar
A lot has changed with the entry of LED into our lives. I brought the subject into the title of this article, which I think would be the most important of these changes.
There is not an education named lighting engineering in Turkey yet. I did not see an education of this type abroad as well. Only in June 2014, I met an association called the Association of Lighting Engineers during my visit in the “LFI – Light Fair International” held in Las Vegas/America . Following some research, I saw that there is a similar association in Australia. From the information I obtained during my short chat with association officials in America, I learned that the members of this association consists of engineers, most of whom have developed themselves in the lighting sector and lighting designers.
In summary, I could not find a specific training called Lighting Engineering in the world.
Since 2007, I have been visiting all the major fairs, which have the same content with the exhibitions organized by us. Although some of these were not major hubs of the sector, I have been visiting fairs in the region, since it is my region of responsibility. So far, I visited most of the fairs regarding LED and Lighting without any regional discrimination. I had long observations and conversations in every fair I visited. I found the chance to follow the events and observe their developments. As a fair producer, I must say this; Although our fair investigations do not take very long times, our major time was spent to understand and perceive the industry.
I met LED technology in 2006. When LED was mentioned during a conversation, we began to examine my products of interest along with my teammates , and then we decided to host fairs under the name of LED Fair in 2007. We had great difficulties regarding the preparation of introductory file about our fair, because it was necessary to include industry definitions in our files, but we had not been able to obtain information about the matter. With months of work, we have created an industrial classification, and we put down definitions about LED products, which are still used today in many places.
In the period when we first started to work on LEDs, the LED products were mainly being used in a visual sense. Lighting products as we know (lighting for daily use), were only used in very special projects. The “LED fairs” we visited abroad were in the same manner as well. Among the products exhibited in the fair, the proportion of LEDs only used for lighting was low, the sections reserved for LEDs in lighting fairs constituted a very small portion of the whole fair.
The process continued in this manner from 2007 to 2011, and it began to change in 2012. LEDs started to be increasingly used in the Lighting industry. In the lighting industry, which underwent a very rapid change, the ratio of LEDs increased with each year and the first step of this process was (almost) finished in 2014. In 2014, we can see that all lighting companies started to prefer LED lighting against other lighting products.
However, this transformation did not develop only as the conversion of LED lighting products by lighting companies. At the same time, and in a very interesting way, a more interesting process began as electronic companies transformed into lighting companies. As a result, several firms, which use LEDs that are more-preferred in the electronic sector in their products, started to manufacture LED lighting products with their available experience. We saw giant companies of various sectors in lighting fairs. Some of these firms were manufacturing the lighting end product, whereas other firms were manufacturing complementary products.
We experienced these developments first hand in our Led&Led Lighting Fair that we hosted, and also we observed this during our visits to the greatest fairs of the world regarding the industry. A movement has commenced by electronic companies towards lighting industry. This process is still on-going.
As you see, the “Lighting Engineering” that I described starts to become an essential right at this point. As LED products are mainly related to electronics, companies/persons interested in classic lighting are experiencing difficulties in full management of these products, while companies/persons associated with electronic also experience difficulties in understanding lighting. While manufacturing an electronic product is a whole sector within itself, knowing how to use lighting is another sector entirely. You can manufacture very good electronic products, but you need to have spent a long time in the lighting sector to understand whether your product serves the right purpose in lighting.
Yes, there are software that are used/may be used for this purpose. Some of the difficulties in this area were solved by using software. However, one of the main points that makes this matter complicated is that, the diversity in LED lighting is millions of times more than the diversity in conventional lighting products. While what you would obtain with other lighting products has somewhat certain limits, these limits are surpassed excessively with LED lighting. You can obtain whatever you dream of.
When the matter gets this complicated, you are alienated from the subject even if you have average or above average education and experience. As a result of this, the formation of a new profession requires the formation of a new specialism field, as it is required in every complicated sector.
Lighting engineering…
Almost all of us know that, new engineering divisions form as technology evolves. If you used an expression such as Industrial Engineering during my freshman years in the university, it might have sounded as a utopic description. But today, there are several engineering fields that we could not have thought of a few years before, and we welcome the newly formed engineering fields as normal.
I am certain that the new generation lighting products, which are oppressed somewhere between Electric and Electronics, will find their place in a few years. I think that the development and change rate of these products, which came this far in such a short time, will continue on the same levels in the following years.
Let’s see, where would the first steps of the profession group regarding LED lighting products be taken?
What will be the name of this profession group?
How will the developments in our country regarding this field be like?
I am following the developments with care and excitement about, whether this description I made in 2013 (LEDs having a place among Electronic – Electric sectors) and the profession group that is going to emerge in my opinion, would be realized.
Feridun Bayram
General Manager
Marmara Fair Org.