Welcome to resilience week

It’s resilience week on The Engineer this week, which means that over the course of the next few days - with a little help from our partner, global distributor RS Components - we will be taking a close look at an issue that has dominated industry discourse over the past 12 months: resilience.

Just a couple of years ago few successful businesses - or indeed sectors - would have even thought about questioning their resilience. In less tumultuous times it was assumed that healthy profits and sales provided all the reassurance a business needed that it could look forward to a long and prosperous future.

But the momentous events of the past year, with the pandemic rattling a manufacturing base already unsettled by the long-running (and continuing) uncertainties created by Brexit, have surely put an end to any such complacency.

And today, above almost any other measure, resilience - defined as the ability to recover quickly from difficulties - is increasingly seen as the number one priority.

Recent events have made organisations across industry painfully aware of pinch points and frailties that had barely been considered in the past

From the sudden fragility of once bullet proof supply chains to an overnight slump in demand for products and services, not to mention the emergence of unexpected operational challenges around how - for instance – teams collaborate and communicate, recent events have made organisations across industry painfully aware of pinch points and frailties that had barely been considered in the past.

Over the course of this week, we will be looking at some of challenges brought to fore during the pandemic and exploring the ways in which different organisations have responded to these challenges and kept the show on the road in the most challenging of circumstances. And, as well as offering expert insight into how firms can address these short and immediate term challenges, we will also be exploring some of the strategies organisations can deploy to ensure they are in the best possible position to respond to whatever the world might throw at them in the future.

As always, we will also be taking a close look at the role that technology can play, in particularly the ways in which digital technologies – ranging from predictive maintenance systems to digital twins and intelligent supply chain management tools – can help organisations become more nimble and shock and proof and smoothly navigate our increasingly complex and unpredictable world.

As always, we look forward to hearing from our readers over the coming days and would like to encourage you all to join the debate and share your thoughts on this important topic.

Our partner for this week’s activities is the electronics components supplier RS Components. Over the course of the next few days we’ll be hearing from some its leading engineers about their strategies for boosting resilience.

Index image: j-mel via stock.adobe.com