GameStop’s epic short-squeeze rally is not changing Bank of America’s mind on its long-term outlook.

You know the saying that “a company culture eats a change strategy for breakfast”. This is to say that by nature, humans -and by extension human organizations – are reluctant to change.

Nevertheless, some changes are not optional. They are a business survival matter.

Manufacturing has entered unchartered territory. Whatever the product you make or sector you serve. COVID-19 has triggered a health and economic crisis of such magnitude that we simply have no equivalent scenarios with which to compare.

A post-pandemic map does not exist; an easy-to-follow step-by-step guide to help reach a desired destination has not been written for this eventuality. Coupled with the only known — that further changes are inevitable, yet, highly unpredictable — it may well seem that navigating a clear route forward is a virtually impossible task.

But the truth is, there are landmarks that can help manufacturers plot that journey more accurately. COVID-19 hasn’t obscured them. In fact, it has made them all-the-more prominent.

A number of ‘megatrends’ that were driving decision making pre-pandemic are more relevant now than ever.

Stick with sustainability
Sustainable production. Last year that meant improving the environmental credentials of products and parts by making the manufacturing processes and supply chains behind them leaner and greener. Reducing wastage in every sense, from minimizing production scrap to eliminating energy waste by simplifying supply chains and optimizing transportation of goods.

Sustainability has become an incredibly practical business survival tactic.

Supercharging health and safety
Staff health and safety has always been a priority for manufacturers. During the pandemic, it’s fair to say that this has also been a significant challenge. Introducing social distancing and a wide range of COVID-associated protocols on top of standard measures to ensure worker wellbeing has been a tough task. But one the industry has risen to.

Nobody knows what the legacy of this period will be on manufacturing exactly, but I think this keen focus on health and safety is a very safe bet. Why? Because people power production. And with many workforces reduced or operating with adjusted shift patterns to minimize contact between colleagues, taking every precaution to ensure staff safety is key.

Digitalization won’t disappear
Industry 4.0 and the rise of digitalization has been one of the most dominant themes in manufacturing in recent history, primarily due to the significant efficiency gains on the table. Post-COVID, these potential efficiency gains can help manufacturers take important steps towards improving productivity and profitability. As a result, digitalization is here to stay at the top of priority ladders.

But digitalization also has much more to offer in terms of helping manufacturers seize new or rapidly evolving opportunities.

De-risking production and cutting costs
Let’s quickly reiterate my earlier point about digital spares here. There are inevitably tools and components that need to be replaced more often than others due to their function and associated wear. Switching to a model of 3D-printed digital spares in such cases avoids the supply chain risk and minimizes storage costs. It can also significantly limit damaging downtime. Small digital change, big business value.

Minimizing time-to-market, maximizing ROI
The digital-first nature of AM means that the time taken to advance from concept stage to low volume runs for acceptance testing can be dramatically shortened for more responsive production. Rapid-iteration design, encompassing immediate market feedback and customer collaboration, then allows for cost-effective fine-tuning to establish a “known sellable” that won’t require costly retrospective changes further down the line.

Short run strategy, simplified
What if you are not launching to market? What if you are a long-standing supplier of parts and products to established sectors?

Evolution not revolution
I started this post by saying that a post-pandemic map does not exist because we don’t know exactly where we are heading. We do know, however, that the ‘new normal’ in manufacturing is firmly focused on the ‘here and now’. Because it has to be. There’s no other choice.

That doesn’t require a revolution. Because revolutionary change is, by and large, focused on achieving a specific end goal. Instead what’s needed are guidance points manufacturers can keep sight of, and tools which support evolution at pace with the world around us.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing hiked its revenue outlook after logging record quarterly profit, and painted a bullish picture of demand picking up over the next two years as advanced technologies are adopted more widely.

The chip sector has been one of the rare industries benefiting from the coronavirus pandemic with more people investing in premium devices as they spend longer hours at home and as corporations seek to add more bandwidth for remote workers.

The world’s largest contract chipmaker said it now expects 2020 revenue to jump more than 30 percent, up from an earlier forecast of more than 20 percent and marking the second quarter in a row it has lifted its outlook.

As the United States races to distribute vaccines amid a winter surge in Covid-19 cases and lawmakers weigh another tranche of federal stimulus spending, analysts from investment giant Goldman Sachs are pointing to three major risks that could jeopardize the strong economic recovery and robust consumer spending boom they’re predicting in 2021.

In that scenario, the analysts predict that any progress towards herd immunity would be “lost or severely set back” and as a result, consumer spending wouldn’t recover until 2022.

Last, the analysts said heightened consumer caution, especially among at-risk groups like older individuals, that lingers after the virus abates could delay the return to normal, but they noted this risk is relatively limited since consumer spending has only fallen slightly this winter despite a huge surge in Covid-19 cases. 

“We expect the spread of the virus will be a major determinant of the balance of risks going forward,” the analysts wrote, “as higher case counts increase the chances of problematic mutations and lower case counts raise the prospects of an upside surprise to consumer spending in 2021.”

These aren’t the only risks the economy will face this year. The World Bank warned earlier this month that a “growing wave of debt” caused by unprecedented government stimulus spending to combat the coronavirus could lead to recessions down the road. Some experts have also suggested that too much stimulus spending could overheat the economy and send inflation to dangerously high levels, but Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has said he believes the effects will be manageable in the long-term. “The dynamics will change,” he said in a recent interview at Princeton University, “but we don’t think they change quickly or on a dime.” 

The backbone of computing architecture for 75 years is being supplanted by more efficient, less general compute architectures.