Editorial

Starting with the proverb which says that "craft is an golden armlet", it should be known what nowadays the term "craft" means, both from the knowledge and from the human qualities points of view.
If we analyze the term 'craft' as for an employer in wood industry, we can not imagine him anymore as a person that works with the manual saw, plane, hammer and screwdriver. The wood industry, which has known a continuous modernization and technical improvement, uses the "craftman" now as a person able to use the machine console or the control panel of the technological line and to access the computer software in order to optimize the cutting model depending on the domain of use and the control range, or to optimize the working parameters of the machines or of the technological lines depending on the element sizes, wood species they are made of, processing direction against the wood structure, the quality of the processed surfaces etc.
So "the craft" of any wood industry worker is more sophisticated now for those who want to activate in this sector, and we refer to the computer field knowledge, technical knowledge about wood processing, technical knowledge about the wood species and their structure, technological knowledge about the sequence of operations, technological basis etc., they have to have.
Under those conditions, the level of knowledge of the "qualified workers" in wood industry must exceed a lot the one existed 20-25 years ago. Nowadays, the relation worker-machine is mutual and non-destructible, now the worker and the machine "cooperate" together the process computer.
If this is the way how things stay with the "craftman", what about the engineer, the manager, the design engineer who has to prepare the enterprise for the production process ?!
Under the present conditions, required by the market economy, the manager of the enterprise must have knowledge in many fields and also certain human qualities which will allow him to be successful.
The manager must have first the basic managerial notions through which the decision taken is based on information, well processed in his mind and launched at an appropriate moment, optimizing it against the market but also taking into account the real possibilities and not on the illusive ones.
So, the manager must have technical and technological knowledge about the processes he organizes and takes decisions on, without falling in the trap of "only the profit counts".
The manager must also have managerial knowledge, in order for his decisions to not depend exclusively on other person, or not even partially. Only under these conditions, his decisions will be fully real, applicable and able to be completed. Moreover, the manager must have enough economical knowledge in order to understand the notions related to price, factors of influence, market, profit (in its complex way, able to be forecasted and with the possibility of an active, not passive control).
Looking at the "professional future" of an engineer in wood industry and seeing the necessity for the continuous improvement of the knowledge level of our specialists - as future successful managers - the Faculty of Wood Industry proposes you a new graduate specialization entitled forestry engineering and management, which will start in the next university year 2008-2009.
The new specialization has a complex and attractive curricula and it creates the "specialized manager" of a well defined economic sector, completing the technical and technological knowledge with the management and economic ones, creating thus the "person who will wittingly take decisions", being aware of the complexity of all of the following factors: technical, technological, energy-related, ecological and economic ones.

Prof.Dr.Eng. Ivan CISMARU
President of Managerial Board of PRO LIGNO Foundation