• • • SOFTWARE • • •


THE FACTORY FLOOR CANNOT WAIT FOR THE WORLD TO STABILISE


BY STEPHEN GRAHAM, VP PRODUCT & TECHNOLOGY, PRODUCTION SOFTWARE, HEXAGON T


here is a particular sort of silence in a factory when a plan starts to unravel. A material delivery has slipped, but the


customer still wants the job on the original date. The cost assumptions in the quote no longer feel safe. The person who knows the awkward machine setup is already tied up elsewhere. Nobody has done anything wrong, but the work still has to move. That is the reality behind a lot of today’s


manufacturing headlines. Steelmaking capacity has become a national issue in the UK. Tariffs are moving. Energy costs continue to make investment decisions harder. Materials are more expensive to waste. Shipping routes remain exposed to geopolitical disruption. These are large, external forces, but they become very ordinary inside a factory. They become a planner looking at a full schedule, a programmer checking whether a change is safe, an estimator wondering whether the margin has disappeared, or a production manager trying to keep promises made before the conditions changed. Factories do not get to wait for stability. They


have orders to fulfil, machines to run and people to keep aligned. This is why resilience deserves a more practical


conversation. It is often treated as a supply-chain question, which is understandable. Sourcing, logistics, inventory and supplier relationships all matter. But resilience is also built in the everyday decisions made after the order comes in. The factory’s ability to absorb change depends on how well it quotes, plans, programmes, verifies, hands over work and protects production knowledge. That last point is often underestimated.


Manufacturing still relies on people who carry years of judgement in their heads. They know which material will behave badly, which job always needs a second check, which machine can be


34 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • JUNE 2026


trusted with a difficult setup, and which shortcut will probably cause trouble later. Good factories run on this kind of knowledge. The risk is that this knowledge can remain invisible until the person who holds it is unavailable. There is another pressure running underneath


this: the weakening pipeline of skilled workers entering manufacturing in many Western markets. When experienced people are harder to replace, the knowledge they hold becomes even more valuable. Resilience depends on whether the judgement can be captured, shared and applied by others before the next disruption arrives. In calm periods, gaps in process are often


covered by experienced people working hard. Under pressure, that way of operating becomes more fragile. A late change to material can affect nesting, tooling, cycle time and quality. A rushed programme can create scrap or downtime. A quote based on old assumptions can win the work and still damage the business. A handover that relies on memory can leave the next person guessing. For factory leaders, efficiency can no longer be


judged only by how fast something moves. Speed is important, of course. No manufacturer wants duplicated effort, idle machines or avoidable rework. The more valuable question is whether the business can move quickly while still trusting the decision being made. That requires clearer links between commercial


decisions and production reality. Quoting has to reflect how work will actually be made. Planning has to show the real constraints, not the ideal version of capacity. Programming has to reuse proven methods where they exist. Nesting has to protect material when every sheet, plate or stock item carries more pressure. Verification has to happen early enough to stop problems reaching the machine.


The same applies beyond the machine tool.


Factory handling, work-in-progress, warehouse movement and dispatch all depend on information travelling with the job. A well-prepared programme can still lose time if the next person does not understand what has changed, what has been checked, or where the risk sits. This is the useful role of digital manufacturing


technology. It should make good decisions easier to repeat. It should help people prepare work, check manufacturability, validate toolpaths, improve material use and record what has been learned. It should reduce the amount of uncertainty that reaches production unchecked. AI should be held to the same standard.


Manufacturing does not need abstract promises. It needs intelligence that sits close to the work and helps people make better decisions. If AI helps an estimator understand risk, helps a programmer apply a proven method, or helps a newer employee learn from the judgement of experienced colleagues, it has a meaningful role. Trust will come from usefulness, not novelty. The pressures around manufacturing will


continue to move. Policy, tariffs, energy prices, material availability and shipping risk are unlikely to become simpler in the short term. Manufacturers cannot control all of that from the factory floor. What they can control is preparation. The


businesses that cope best will be those that see their work clearly before it reaches the machine, protect the knowledge that keeps production moving, and give their teams the confidence to act when the plan changes. The world outside the factory may remain


unpredictable. Inside the factory, preparation is becoming one of the strongest forms of resilience.


www.hexagon.com electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk


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