Three Forces that will Shape Manufacturing’s Post-Pandemic Future

It’s been a challenging 18 months for businesses in various parts of the manufacturing sector. For those at the forefront of the pandemic response, leaders have been forced to react quickly to shifting circumstances.

As economies have reopened, and we experience new uncertainties around supply chain and workforce challenges, it’s natural to be cautious. Before committing to a strategy, leaders want greater clarity on what the new, post-pandemic landscape will look like. It’s important, however, that we don’t let this opportunity for growth in the manufacturing sector slip by. Now is the time for conviction. We’re entering what I believe will be a period of sustained economic expansion and leaders need to capitalise on this opportunity.

Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, all concerns before the pandemic, are now thrown into even sharper focus as we emerge from it. The question is how we adapt to these forces. I suggest industrial leaders should focus their efforts on addressing three key areas: Resilience, Agility and Sustainability.

Being Resilient in Response to Sudden Shocks

The one thing we know for sure about the 2020s is that the decade will present a period of significant change. The pandemic has highlighted how the ground under our feet can be shaken in an instant. In addition to the COVID-19 response, we have a series of other influences, including geopolitical turmoil, rapid digital advancement and cybersecurity issues that have the capacity to bring major turbulence.

Being resilient means not just surviving in the face of change but becoming stronger as a result. Industrial leaders need to consider the strategies and tools that maintain business continuity, whether in response to recurring risks or to unanticipated threats emerging.

For example, over the course of the pandemic we’ve seen more of our customers experiment with and adopt remote technologies and simulated operations. As pre-pandemic norms such as on-site visits and international travel are hindered, the use of augmented and mixed-reality-based solutions have helped in supporting communications, workflows and skill sharing across insurmountable boundaries.

In this new remote era, threats around cybersecurity have continued to grow, both at individual and business levels. We’ve been supporting customers with a defence-in-depth approach that begins by assessing the resilience of end devices, looking across the network to make sure that proper segmentation is used, and importantly that data is protected.

Being Agile to What the Market Wants, Today and Tomorrow

An important lesson from the past 18 months has been that the leading manufacturers of tomorrow will be those we can’t put in a box. As flexibility becomes a priority from the shop floor to each end of the supply chain, leaders need to be thinking at a deeper level about how their business can be built for change.

‘Impressive’ doesn’t begin to convey the magnitude of the achievement we witnessed at the height of the pandemic period. Factories were able to move with speed and to retrofit, in some cases, entire plants to produce what was most needed. For examples, you need look no further than IMA Group and Teknoweb Converting in Italy or Irish Distillers

. Not only did they deliver, but they did so quickly, accurately and at viable price points. This would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

This victory provided us with a glimpse of what the manufacturing operations of tomorrow looks like – complete agility in response to changing market demand. Shifting operational requirements, changing buyer wants and behaviours, and the need for rapid innovation are all forces that will encourage the sector to have flexibility embedded into the foundations of areas like product development, production and supply chain.

Being Best Stewards of a Sustainable Future for Manufacturing

No manufacturer can hide from the fact that our sector is critical in leading sustainable change. The growth and scale of global manufacturing is such that we make a substantial impact in areas that are critical for the future of humanity – energy, water and waste. It’s now up to us whether that impact is positive or negative.

The question is how we make sustainability central to what we do. At Rockwell Automation we’re living up to our own sustainability promise.

We’re committed to becoming carbon neutral and we have assigned a sustainability officer with a dedicated team to support this cause. We think that it’s important to have a bold target and hold every level of our business accountable to those aims.

It’s also not only about our own carbon-neutral ambitions, but about making sure our ecosystem of suppliers and partners all match our ambitions. Our recent work with Sustainder and Technologies Added in the Netherlands is just one example of this in practice.

Reducing energy inputs, improving the reliability of equipment and increasing the circularity of industrial equipment through recycling are all things that are well within our control. Digital technology can support progress in sustainability, such as the use of analytics for better management of energy inputs to identify opportunities for improved efficiency. We’re also assisting customers in the use of preventative maintenance to reduce the risk of downtime and increase the overall reliability of equipment.

Seeking Answers in Digital

Digitalisation alone doesn’t solve these three areas – it’s human ingenuity and intrepidness that brings progress. What digital technologies can do is provide the visibility, control and scale for us to take on these challenges with confidence and conviction. These technologies enable us to work collaboratively within an ecosystem of similarly progressive and ethically minded companies to achieve mutual goals.

The experience of the 2020s so far is that volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are all here to stay – we can’t avoid these forces, so let’s embrace them. By being resilient, agile and sustainability-focused in how we approach these challenges, we can leverage the technologies available to survive and thrive in a changing global landscape.

Mark Bottomley is a regular contributor to our Management Perspectives thought-leadership programme. You can find more of his insights and commentary on his contributor page

there.

Published November 10, 2021

Mark Bottomley

Regional Vice President, Strategic Accounts and Sales Specialists EMEA, Rockwell Automation

Mark Bottomley is Regional Vice President, Strategic Accounts and Sales Specialists EMEA for Rockwell Automation. In his role, Mark is dedicated to delivering the company’s strategy to bring the Connected Enterprise to life. Under his leadership, Rockwell Automation integrates control and information to help make industrial companies and their people more productive and the world more sustainable. Mark accelerates the company’s approach in his region by focusing on understanding customer needs and their best opportunities for productivity, combining our technology and domain expertise to deliver positive business outcomes.

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