Industry Summary Articles

“May you live in interesting times” is a saying which is commonly used ironically to refer to times of trouble. Well, we certainly seem to be living in interesting times at the moment. At ModuleWorks, we currently have our entire workforce working from home, spread across many different countries. Fortunately, as a relatively agile software company, we are able to transition to home working quickly and easily. We can only begin to imagine the challenges for some industries, such as the manufacturing companies that represent the end users of our software.

Having made the adjustments to enable home working, and maintain a reasonable level of continuity, our thoughts are now turning to the future and what our industry will look like in 3-6 months’ time. In particular, we have been considering our partners and how we can help them to be successful during this time. We expect some of our partners may suffer a financial impact over the next few months but believe it is important to focus on recovering as soon as possible when things return to normal. Of course, ‘normal’ may not be the same normal that we have been used to, so we have been considering what the ‘New Normal’ will look like and how ModuleWorks can help its partners to be ready.

Resources
The next few months will present challenges to many of our partners and some of them may even need to reduce the size of their teams. Indeed, many countries have introduced schemes to help companies do this on a temporary basis, to allow for a rapid recovery. This might lead to a shortage of resources when the demands of the ‘New Normal’ start to appear. ModuleWorks has a large development team, highly skilled in 3D geometry and CAD/CAM algorithms, and modern, agile development processes ideally suited to project work. As new demands start to appear, ModuleWorks is happy to discuss any requirements, either large or small, to help its partners build solid foundations for the future.

Digital Twin
Travel is currently severely restricted, and it is likely that some level of restrictions will continue for most of this year. This presents a range of challenges, especially for hardware companies such as machine tool builders. At the time of writing, it is not clear which major exhibitions are likely to go ahead, and so presenting physical machines to potential prospects is difficult.    

For some time, ModuleWorks has provided technology to support the Digital Twin initiative of Industry 4.0, and this year launched a new product – Visual Twin – to provide the most realistic virtual equivalent of a machine tool. To show you what the Visual Twin can do, we’ve planned a dedicated webinar.

Automation
As the manufacturing industry returns to work, it is likely that some countries may impose social distancing constraints, such as the 2m rule. This may require some companies to reduce the number of people on the shop floor or in some offices. One way to enable a reduction in the number of people is to increase the level of automation. This has already been the trend for many years and it is likely to accelerate as we return to the ’New Normal’.

Also, given the international supply chain challenges over the last few months, some industries will look to establish more local suppliers. As these suppliers may well be in higher cost countries, it will be important to have a high level of automation to keep costs at an acceptable level.

ModuleWorks provides a framework to enable automation. Join our webinar to discover what it can do for your business.

Robotics
Another trend which is likely to accelerate in the ‘New Normal’ world is the use of robots. The demands of social distancing and cost control are likely to increase the use of robots in the manufacturing industry. In particular, the development of cobots, designed to work alongside people, could prove to be a significant step towards this.

We’re planning a webinar during late summer to provide information on our developments in robotics and additive manufacturing.

The success of ModuleWorks depends on the success of our partners. We want to do everything we can to support our partners to get through this difficult time in a way that allows them to thrive in the ‘New Normal’ world. We are looking forward to seeing an initial decrease in the number of infections and hope things get back to “normal” as soon as the situation allows.

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