The staff from the manufacturing group at GIE Media hopes that everyone enjoy their Labor Day weekend.
Our offices will be closed today as we recognize Labor Day, the creation of the labor movement and its dedication to the social and economic achievements of American workers. We hope everyone stays safe and has a nice, relaxing holiday.
Don't delay, we have a jam-packed scheduled of webinars to help you stay current on the latest industry trends and technologies.
This roundtable event will focus on the latest advancements in metrology including:
Selling or acquiring a business might be one of the biggest business/financial decision a business owner can make. If you are a seller, you might be selling a company that you have successfully built and grown over decades. If you are an acquirer buying a business to add to yours might be the difference between a slower organic growth and quickly becoming a major player in your segment. There is a huge impact for whatever side you are on. As a seller, you know what you have put into growing your business. You want to be rewarded for it, and rightfully so. What are valuation expectations from companies <$10 million; between $10 million and $50 million; >$50 million, etc. What might drive valuation for your business? Perhaps it may be in terms of multiples of your revenues, or your EBITDA? Or, is it altogether a totally different equation based on strategic fit and the market segment you are in? And once you decide to sell, what is the process to find out the true valuation? As we know, the market ALWAYS decides the real valuation of any enterprise by the actual amounts someone is willing to pay for it. What steps should you think about in your M&A process to increase your opportunity to maximize your business value when you sell it? What type of M&A Advisor should you consider? How long is an optimal M&A process? So, what is the likely valuation of a business and what does it take to sell it? From the beginning of the process all the way to a successful transaction, join MedWorld Advisors' CEO Florence Joffroy-Black and Managing Director Dave Sheppard as they discuss this very specific subject.
Past methods for supporting metal additive manufactured (AM) parts have imposed limitations on part design. The increased complexity associated with removing supports has added cost and lead time to the process, and some parts and applications have even been disqualified from AM due to support-based issues. Together with 3D Systems’ leading expertise and machine platforms, our 3DXpert software package has advanced metal AM capabilities to help expand your design envelope with features such as multi-exposure and thermal blades to help you realize the goal of no supports. Multi-exposure can drastically reduce the self-supporting angle while maintaining a high-quality surface finish, and thermal blades provide a structure to transfer heat and control the weld process for the lowest-angle features without welding to the part. Topics covered in this webinar include:
Investment to accelerate growth and expand consulting services for medical device and diagnostics manufacturers.
RQM+ announced an investment by Linden Capital Partners (Linden), a Chicago-based healthcare private equity firm. Headquartered in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, RQM+ is the largest international provider of regulatory, quality and compliance consulting services dedicated to medical device and in-vitro diagnostics manufacturers.
Maria Fagan, CEO of RQM+, states, “We are extremely proud of the business we have built at RQM+ and excited to partner with Linden to accelerate our growth and expand the breadth of services we can provide to our customers. We chose the Linden team as our partner for the next phase of our growth due to their exclusive focus on healthcare investing and shared vision for RQM+.”
Richard Thomas, incoming board member of RQM+ and industry veteran, says, “We commend Maria Fagan, Lisa Casavant and the entire management team at RQM+ on building an extraordinary business providing superior quality and services that are essential to helping their clients navigate a dynamic and increasing complex regulatory landscape. As manufacturers accelerate product and technology innovation to meet future healthcare needs, RQM+ is uniquely positioned to support the industry with an expanding suite of end-to-end capabilities and approaches to strategic partnership.”
Michael Farah, a partner at Linden and incoming board member of RQM+, adds, “Our investment in RQM+ is a direct result of our dedicated and longstanding outsourced medical device services sector effort, and we are excited to partner with an organization with such a strong market reputation in a highly fragmented industry. We look forward to supporting the entire RQM+ team as they seek to grow both organically and through acquisitions.”
Members of the RQM+ leadership team have long-tenured careers rooted in medical device product development. This powerhouse team has led the company’s growth to:
In assessing partners, Fagan also says, “The RQM+ leadership team sought out a partner that was both focused on healthcare and supportive of our continued, intense focus on our core values. Maintaining an incredible culture for employees and delivering innovative solutions to our clients to ensure medical devices reach the patients who need them is what RQM+ is all about. We found Linden to be perfectly aligned to these same core values.”
The cutting tool market continues to experience short-term volatility from a variety of factors, but the overall trend remains positive.
June 2021 U.S. cutting tool consumption totaled $172.1 million, according to the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute (USCTI) and AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology. This total, as reported by companies participating in the Cutting Tool Market Report collaboration, was up 7.1% from May's $160.7 million and up 20.5% when compared with the $142.9 million reported for June 2020. With a year-to-date total of $974.7 million, 2021 is up 1.8% when compared to June 2020.
These numbers and all data in this report are based on the totals reported by the companies participating in the CTMR program. The totals here represent the majority of the U.S. market for cutting tools.
According to Bret Tayne, president of USCTI, “The cutting tool market resumed its upward march in June. The 12-month moving average improvement is in a healthy range. The cutting tool market continues to experience short-term volatility from a variety of factors, but the overall trend remains positive. Our companies are planning for continued growth as projected by our market economists.”
Eli Lustgarten, president of ESL Consultants, comments, “The U.S. economy has fully recovered from its short recession and is entering second half of 2021 in boom conditions. U.S. manufacturing is a key driver with the ISM index (59.5) at very high levels. We expect that the recovery of cutting tool demand should continue through the remainder of 2021 and well into next year. The pandemic is under better control, as the U.S. has learned to live with it; the Delta variant may not have a big impact in the U.S. unless more drastic restrictions are implemented. There is likely to be a larger impact abroad (especially Asia) reflecting the weaker vaccination status.”
Wind River research finds an intelligent systems approach on track to becoming a predominant business model.
Wind River, a global leader in delivering software for intelligent systems, has issued new research, “13 Characteristics of an Intelligent Systems Future,” which examines the technology characteristics roadmap for a mission-critical intelligent systems world. The study predicts that success depends on properly timing the implementation of 13 key intelligent system characteristics that support a rapidly evolving intelligent systems machine economy.
An intelligent systems future
By 2030, $7 trillion of the U.S. economy will be driven by the machine economy, in which systems and business models increasingly engage in unlocking the power of data and new technology platforms. Intelligent systems are helping to drive the machine economy and more fully realize IoT. Further fueling this future is the growth of 5G, AI, automation, and cloud native technologies, as well as an increasing intersection of IoT and the edge. This potent combination has opened up new possibilities for far edge applications such as robotics, drones, telemedicine, and autonomous vehicles. Realizing this promise requires a new approach to building systems that can compute, sense, learn, and adjust in near-latency-free real time on the edge. Executives across the automotive, energy and utilities, medical, telecommunications, industrial manufacturing, and aerospace and defense sectors share a common belief that this future is going to require a new blueprint.
The report surveyed technology executives across various mission-critical industries and revealed the 13 requirements of the intelligent systems world for which industry leaders must prepare. The research found that 80% of these technology leaders desire intelligent systems success within the next five years.
Success in this machine economy will be dictated by the technology approaches and capabilities that are built now. 62% of technology leaders are putting into place strategies to move to an intelligent systems future, and 16% are already committed, investing, and performing strongly. It’s estimated that this 16% could realize at least four times higher ROI than their peers who are equally committed but not organized for success in the same way. Additionally, those who are succeeding have prioritized overcoming challenges posed by skill shortages and ongoing cyberthreats, which were two of the most commonly cited barriers in the study.
“In a growing machine economy driven by intelligent systems, humans and machines are on a path to a future where data will exponentially increase the volume, type, and quality of work that is possible, across all industries. These new use cases will demand more complex computing workloads, data, and analytics, and often that must happen in real time,” said Michael Gale, chief marketing officer at Wind River. “Wind River is at the forefront of helping companies address the complexities surrounding the secure development, deployment, operations, and servicing of mission-critical intelligent systems for the next generation.”
Blueprints leverage 13 key intelligent systems characteristics
The research surfaced 13 key characteristics that are critical markers for successful intelligent systems. It also highlighted the importance of investing the right elements at the right time, or “blueprinting.” In the case of building intelligent systems, three concepts are key: prepare the right infrastructure first, next work on foundational needs, and then address longer-term capabilities.
The 13 key characteristics are:
The study also indicates that just four of the 13 characteristics create the most possible impact: true compute on the edge, a common workflow platform, AL/ML capabilities, and ecosystems of real-time applications. These characteristics are core needs on which longer-term success is dependent. Without these, it would not be possible to build all the remaining characteristics and achieve success.
Insights by industry
The report also highlights key findings by vertical industry, providing a blueprint that isolates the key characteristics most critical to that market and pinpoints when to invest in them. Input was sourced from companies in the aerospace and defense, automotive, energy and utilities, industrial, medical, and telecommunications markets. Leaders in these markets shared their perspectives in the following areas:
The extreme demands of an intelligent systems future present new complexities and challenges. Drawing from its proven expertise across the intelligent systems landscape, Wind River can help companies at any stage of the journey. Wind River Studio is a cloud native platform for the development, deployment, operations, and servicing of mission-critical intelligent systems from devices to cloud. It enables dramatic improvements in productivity, agility, and time-to-market, with seamless technology integration that includes far edge cloud compute, data analytics, security, 5G, and AI/ML.
Full research findings, including in-depth vertical industry insights and technology investment blueprints, are available at here.
Posted by Elizabeth Engler Modic
