Anthony Locicero, Associate Editor11.04.20
According to McKinsey & Company’s “COVID-19: Implications for Business,” global economic contractions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have far exceeded those of the Great Recession that ended in 2009 and have occurred at a much faster rate, hitting all sectors and many of the world’s largest employers.
“Like most other companies during this time, we have been heavily impacted by COVID-19, not just due to changes in the markets we serve, but also our new operations processes,” said Tony Searle, business director, electronic materials, Sun Chemical.
Searle said the automotive market saw a sharp decline in the first half of the year due to fewer people buying new cars.
Other markets, such as medical and food packaging, “have weathered the impact better,” he added.
Impacts on Ynvisible’s business have been “moderate,” according to CEO Jani-Mikael Kuusisto.
“This has been a year of steady income growth, but it hasn’t come as easy as it perhaps would have in more normal times,” he said. “Ynvisible has been extremely fortunate with COVID-19 so far in that there have been no fatal impacts of the virus on our team or immediate loved ones. Our team has managed to cope with the new reality and we’ve been in relatively good spirits.”
“I think we’ve done incredibly well and adapted quite well,” said Ryan Moss, business development manager, emerging technologies for Brewer Science. “We quickly put rules in place and we’ve seen production increase.
“Our entire engagement plan for the year was completely scrapped, and it has been very interesting to adjust,” he added.
Shifting Gears
There have been companies across all sectors shifting gears to assist during the pandemic.
Moss has seen shifts in interest in terms of products being developed or introduced related to battling COVID-19.
“We received a lot of interest in our printed temperature sensor between April and May,” he said. “We are finishing the R&D phase and moving into manufacturing with some customers. This is a custom design and allows customers to do further manufacturing and qualifications, coinciding with what they used to use. So far, they are testing very well and have great initial test results. We’ve also had inquiries in the wearables side.”
“Health and diagnostics is obviously an increasingly hot sector for printed electronics,” Kuusisto said. “But in addition, certain themes are now certainly stronger than before, among them authentication of products and their functioning.”
Ynvisible teamed with Agiler, with Ynvisible’s printed electrochromic displays integrated into a label that can measure UVC exposure and visually indicate surface cleanliness, the CEO said.
“In some markets, it seems like the pause in operations in spring and early summer gave engineers and designers a break from day-to-day operations that enabled them to evaluate IMSE technology. We’re now seeing increasing demand as a result,” TactoTek VP Dave Rice said. “In the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, automotive projects that were in the process continued on schedule. However, some that were in earlier stages of development were put on hold by our customers.
“In addition, one of our customers pushed the market release of its product with an IMSE user interface from mid-2020 to late 2020 or early 2021,” he continued. “However, in the last two months, we’ve seen a resurgence in activity, including automotive projects with very fast schedules for that segment and a surge in activity for IMSE home appliance solutions.
Searle said several of Sun Chemical’s direct customers are working on solutions to better detect COVID-19 and significantly reduce the amount of time a sample takes to be tested.
“We have seen many global trends during the pandemic and certainly one is an increase in content consumption on displays,” said Russell Kempt, VP of sales & marketing at Nanosys. “As a consequence, and we believe furthered by the lack of mobility during the pandemic, the data indicates that there is an upgrade cycle underway for TVs and monitors as more people work from home and stay home to consume content.
“While overall TV purchases are flat to down slightly, sales of TVs with premium features such as Smart functionality, 4K and 8K resolution and wide color gamut all are growing,” he continued. “Nanosys Quantum Dot materials are used extensively in these product categories, as well as in high-end monitors.”
Kempt expects more than 10.5 million quantum dot displays will ship this year alone. “We will exceed our expectations for the production volumes and revenue for the calendar year of 2020,” he said.
Zebra, which recently acquired Reflexis Systems, a provider of workforce management and task management software solutions to the retail industry, developed a solution called MotionWorks Proximity, which is designed to protect employees and keep businesses running, per Rob Armstrong, VP portfolio marketing.
“The solution helps enforce social distancing guidelines by supporting employer-managed proximity monitoring, alerting and contact tracing based on our expertise in purpose-built mobile devices, RFID and workflow software,” he said.
Armstrong also reported an acceleration of omnichannel trends and changes in shopping trends.
“E-commerce is exploding and customers are also buying online and picking up goods curbside,” he said. “The single biggest operating expense in retail is labor, and the single biggest capital expense in retail is inventory.
“In addition, automation provides us an opportunity to bring exciting new solutions to our customers that drive improved productivity, safety and better overall outcomes. Intelligent automation – unlike repetitive automation – in retail and the warehouse, for example, leverages our sense-analyze-act framework to improve workflows by augmenting humans with a range of technology,” he continued. “Advancements in barcoding, RFID, computer vision, analytics and AI are creating additional opportunities by bringing intelligent automation to another level.”
The biosensor market, with rapid COVID-19 sensors, is a key growth area, Searle reported.
“Most countries are keen to get these new sensors into use,” he said. “This has created rapid demand for some of the inks we supply into this market space. Our SunSens range of products covers conductive inks (silver, silver chloride, gold and platinum), carbons, dielectrics along with various stabilized enzymes and stabilizer solutions.”
Business During COVID-19
To adjust to this ongoing pandemic, companies have allowed for remote work while banning non-essential travel – especially with many trade shows being canceled or postponed.
Trade shows are likely to remain virtual for a while at least. CES 2021, the National Retail Federation’s 2021 Big Show and FLEX 2021 are all scheduled to be conducted virtually.
“We’ve always personalized our business as much as possible. That has included extensive travel for in-person meetings by our sales team, executives and product managers, hosting guests and providing tours of our operations many times a week, supporting our partners at trade events and hosting our own conference. Most of those in-person activities came to an abrupt halt in March,” Rice said. “Now, those at TactoTek who can work from home do so most of the time.
“The pandemic accelerated the adoption and acceptance of virtual engagement internally and externally; it has also emphasized the need for effectively using collaboration tools and systems and put a premium on digitalizing everything possible,” he continued. “With so many far-flung colleagues and partners, it takes a lot of effort from everyone to stay current and connected.
“Business travel is limited to protect our employees and their families, as well as our customers, and COVID 19-related rules are followed to the letter. We also have very clear requirements for employees who experience flu-like or COVID-19-specific symptoms, or who have come into contact with others with those symptoms. With the resumption of school and the beginning of the flu season, many employees have COVID-19 tests and quarantined until receiving their results – all negative to date,” Rice concluded.
Sun Chemical has allowed employees to continue working remotely, “to limit exposure to other key workers in our factories, which allow us to continue mass production,” Searle said.
“Our approach is based on setting strategic priorities and maximizing work from home arrangements while being agile. We are focused on safety first along with a detailed plan and frequent communication with all our employees,” Armstrong said. “A slower return to the office allows the necessary consideration of key elements such as transportation disruptions and the preparation for safe interactions within our sites. Priority is being given to employees with jobs that require access to production equipment or engineering labs and those who work in repair depots, distribution centers and some call centers.
“Working from home will continue to be the preferred method for those who can effectively do so in alignment with their management team’s expectations.”
“We’ve returned mostly to normal operations, using enhanced health protocols, now after an unprecedented 67-day shelter-in-place order was lifted by the Santa Clara County health officer back on May 22,” Kempt said.
“During the shelter-in-place period, we were only able to perform minimum basic operations, and as a result our business was substantially impacted for the first half but is now back on track, due to record breaking production volumes in the second half,” he added. “We have had to implement a number of changes to our operation in order to safely re-open. These include masking, social distancing, frequent cleaning and changing some of our regular workflows to accommodate these new requirements.”
Zebra created one of its best-performing campaigns, “Empowering Heroes,” which, Armstrong said, “celebrated and thanked front-line workers through a powerful video plus content to help keep them safe, such as information on how to clean our products across the full Zebra portfolio.”
A stronger emphasis has been placed on digital marketing.
“We’ve taken a ‘sense, analyze, act’ approach,” Armstrong said. “We ‘sense’ when visitors are on our digital properties, we ‘analyze’ that engagement and how we can best follow up with customized information on their next visit, and then we ‘act’ by engaging with our visitors and alerting our sellers where there’s interest to help progress the buyers’ journey and advance a potential sale.”
Without a vaccine and with cases booming in certain areas, some of these changes – especially remote work – may stay in effect well into 2021.
“We expect the world to have now leaped into the use of remote working tools. We expect people will work more from home than they used to, and we expect to see somewhat less business travel,” Ynvisible’s Kuusisto said. “However, this does not mean that the need for face-to-face meetings will completely disappear, but on-line tools will take working with clients and partners to a whole new level.
“With the pandemic on the minds of people, we expect there to be increased public interest in – and investments into – health, wellness and environmental issues. We see many opportunities for flexible and printed electronics in all this,” the CEO continued.
“With disruptions to international supply chains during COVID-19 lockdowns, we see advantages in setting up printed electronics manufacturing as a more widely distributed production technique – e.g. the production of our electrochromic displays is being developed for wide-scale adoption by production companies around the planet,” he concluded.
Searle also believes face-to-face meetings will eventually resume, but “people are now much more familiar using online conferencing applications for virtual meetings, which is a much more efficient use of time rather than traveling to meet.
“We predict that this will continue to be utilized more even after COVID-19, but will not totally replace in-person meetings,” he added.
In regards to remote work, Searle said, “With the improvements made in communication tools, there is a realization that many people can remain efficient working from home and it is felt that even after the pandemic, this could be more common across certain roles.”
Rice said TactoTek is developing “very effective” virtual work patterns and support systems.
“I expect that working from home, wherever that may be, will remain commonplace,” he said. “There are many benefits of that change, including removing geographic constraints for many roles and enabling both employees and employers to find their best match in a wider marketplace. It will require creativity and consistent effort to build the camaraderie that is so rewarding and valuable, particularly in an early growth company like TactoTek.
“While there’s nothing better than meeting in-person to learn from our customers, educate about our solutions, build successful partnerships and bridge divides, I don’t expect business travel to resume to the levels preceding the pandemic,” Rice concluded.
“Now everything is virtual and I can see that becoming more of a permanent situation,” Moss said. “The savings from a business standpoint is such an advantage – now you can do business remotely across time zones.”
Added Armstrong: “We anticipate the continued focus on digitization will remain critical with customers appreciating the convenience and efficiency of trends like e-commerce and buy online and pick-up in-store or curbside. We also believe flexible work options will remain vital as well, and the use of intelligent automation in a way that augments workers on the front-line to help them do their best – and safest – work is here to stay.”
Community Efforts
Companies also took an active role in their communities. Brewer Science places a particularly strong emphasis on community service, and worked closely to help its neighbors during COVID-19.
“Early on, we had some of our safety team doing mask fit testing at nursing homes,” said Nathan Ayres, communications manager, Brewer Science, Inc. “In the last month or so we have been producing hand sanitizer that we’ve been giving out to police, fire and local schools.”
Nanosys worked with a local non-profit Dragon School to sponsor its latest project – a mural painting by a local artist in Uptown Oakland.
“We see this as an opportunity to help give Oakland artists a voice so they can remind others of the importance of working together to unify and beautify their neighborhood, especially difficult times of financial crisis and social inequity,” Kempt said.
Zebra and its employees donated to the Red Cross, Armstrong said.
“We are also actively working with our customers and partners globally to provide healthcare products and services technology where the need is the greatest,” he said. “We also hosted our first-ever Global Week of Service last month, with more than 1,000 hours volunteered to support 45 organizations in 11 countries globally. Additionally, we’ve made significant strides to ensure our culture is one that is inclusive and diverse with expanded resources, a comprehensive I&D program, and the introduction of several new inclusion networks since the beginning of the year.”
“Like most other companies during this time, we have been heavily impacted by COVID-19, not just due to changes in the markets we serve, but also our new operations processes,” said Tony Searle, business director, electronic materials, Sun Chemical.
Searle said the automotive market saw a sharp decline in the first half of the year due to fewer people buying new cars.
Other markets, such as medical and food packaging, “have weathered the impact better,” he added.
Impacts on Ynvisible’s business have been “moderate,” according to CEO Jani-Mikael Kuusisto.
“This has been a year of steady income growth, but it hasn’t come as easy as it perhaps would have in more normal times,” he said. “Ynvisible has been extremely fortunate with COVID-19 so far in that there have been no fatal impacts of the virus on our team or immediate loved ones. Our team has managed to cope with the new reality and we’ve been in relatively good spirits.”
“I think we’ve done incredibly well and adapted quite well,” said Ryan Moss, business development manager, emerging technologies for Brewer Science. “We quickly put rules in place and we’ve seen production increase.
“Our entire engagement plan for the year was completely scrapped, and it has been very interesting to adjust,” he added.
Shifting Gears
There have been companies across all sectors shifting gears to assist during the pandemic.
Moss has seen shifts in interest in terms of products being developed or introduced related to battling COVID-19.
“We received a lot of interest in our printed temperature sensor between April and May,” he said. “We are finishing the R&D phase and moving into manufacturing with some customers. This is a custom design and allows customers to do further manufacturing and qualifications, coinciding with what they used to use. So far, they are testing very well and have great initial test results. We’ve also had inquiries in the wearables side.”
“Health and diagnostics is obviously an increasingly hot sector for printed electronics,” Kuusisto said. “But in addition, certain themes are now certainly stronger than before, among them authentication of products and their functioning.”
Ynvisible teamed with Agiler, with Ynvisible’s printed electrochromic displays integrated into a label that can measure UVC exposure and visually indicate surface cleanliness, the CEO said.
“In some markets, it seems like the pause in operations in spring and early summer gave engineers and designers a break from day-to-day operations that enabled them to evaluate IMSE technology. We’re now seeing increasing demand as a result,” TactoTek VP Dave Rice said. “In the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, automotive projects that were in the process continued on schedule. However, some that were in earlier stages of development were put on hold by our customers.
“In addition, one of our customers pushed the market release of its product with an IMSE user interface from mid-2020 to late 2020 or early 2021,” he continued. “However, in the last two months, we’ve seen a resurgence in activity, including automotive projects with very fast schedules for that segment and a surge in activity for IMSE home appliance solutions.
Searle said several of Sun Chemical’s direct customers are working on solutions to better detect COVID-19 and significantly reduce the amount of time a sample takes to be tested.
“We have seen many global trends during the pandemic and certainly one is an increase in content consumption on displays,” said Russell Kempt, VP of sales & marketing at Nanosys. “As a consequence, and we believe furthered by the lack of mobility during the pandemic, the data indicates that there is an upgrade cycle underway for TVs and monitors as more people work from home and stay home to consume content.
“While overall TV purchases are flat to down slightly, sales of TVs with premium features such as Smart functionality, 4K and 8K resolution and wide color gamut all are growing,” he continued. “Nanosys Quantum Dot materials are used extensively in these product categories, as well as in high-end monitors.”
Kempt expects more than 10.5 million quantum dot displays will ship this year alone. “We will exceed our expectations for the production volumes and revenue for the calendar year of 2020,” he said.
Zebra, which recently acquired Reflexis Systems, a provider of workforce management and task management software solutions to the retail industry, developed a solution called MotionWorks Proximity, which is designed to protect employees and keep businesses running, per Rob Armstrong, VP portfolio marketing.
“The solution helps enforce social distancing guidelines by supporting employer-managed proximity monitoring, alerting and contact tracing based on our expertise in purpose-built mobile devices, RFID and workflow software,” he said.
Armstrong also reported an acceleration of omnichannel trends and changes in shopping trends.
“E-commerce is exploding and customers are also buying online and picking up goods curbside,” he said. “The single biggest operating expense in retail is labor, and the single biggest capital expense in retail is inventory.
“In addition, automation provides us an opportunity to bring exciting new solutions to our customers that drive improved productivity, safety and better overall outcomes. Intelligent automation – unlike repetitive automation – in retail and the warehouse, for example, leverages our sense-analyze-act framework to improve workflows by augmenting humans with a range of technology,” he continued. “Advancements in barcoding, RFID, computer vision, analytics and AI are creating additional opportunities by bringing intelligent automation to another level.”
The biosensor market, with rapid COVID-19 sensors, is a key growth area, Searle reported.
“Most countries are keen to get these new sensors into use,” he said. “This has created rapid demand for some of the inks we supply into this market space. Our SunSens range of products covers conductive inks (silver, silver chloride, gold and platinum), carbons, dielectrics along with various stabilized enzymes and stabilizer solutions.”
Business During COVID-19
To adjust to this ongoing pandemic, companies have allowed for remote work while banning non-essential travel – especially with many trade shows being canceled or postponed.
Trade shows are likely to remain virtual for a while at least. CES 2021, the National Retail Federation’s 2021 Big Show and FLEX 2021 are all scheduled to be conducted virtually.
“We’ve always personalized our business as much as possible. That has included extensive travel for in-person meetings by our sales team, executives and product managers, hosting guests and providing tours of our operations many times a week, supporting our partners at trade events and hosting our own conference. Most of those in-person activities came to an abrupt halt in March,” Rice said. “Now, those at TactoTek who can work from home do so most of the time.
“The pandemic accelerated the adoption and acceptance of virtual engagement internally and externally; it has also emphasized the need for effectively using collaboration tools and systems and put a premium on digitalizing everything possible,” he continued. “With so many far-flung colleagues and partners, it takes a lot of effort from everyone to stay current and connected.
“Business travel is limited to protect our employees and their families, as well as our customers, and COVID 19-related rules are followed to the letter. We also have very clear requirements for employees who experience flu-like or COVID-19-specific symptoms, or who have come into contact with others with those symptoms. With the resumption of school and the beginning of the flu season, many employees have COVID-19 tests and quarantined until receiving their results – all negative to date,” Rice concluded.
Sun Chemical has allowed employees to continue working remotely, “to limit exposure to other key workers in our factories, which allow us to continue mass production,” Searle said.
“Our approach is based on setting strategic priorities and maximizing work from home arrangements while being agile. We are focused on safety first along with a detailed plan and frequent communication with all our employees,” Armstrong said. “A slower return to the office allows the necessary consideration of key elements such as transportation disruptions and the preparation for safe interactions within our sites. Priority is being given to employees with jobs that require access to production equipment or engineering labs and those who work in repair depots, distribution centers and some call centers.
“Working from home will continue to be the preferred method for those who can effectively do so in alignment with their management team’s expectations.”
“We’ve returned mostly to normal operations, using enhanced health protocols, now after an unprecedented 67-day shelter-in-place order was lifted by the Santa Clara County health officer back on May 22,” Kempt said.
“During the shelter-in-place period, we were only able to perform minimum basic operations, and as a result our business was substantially impacted for the first half but is now back on track, due to record breaking production volumes in the second half,” he added. “We have had to implement a number of changes to our operation in order to safely re-open. These include masking, social distancing, frequent cleaning and changing some of our regular workflows to accommodate these new requirements.”
Zebra created one of its best-performing campaigns, “Empowering Heroes,” which, Armstrong said, “celebrated and thanked front-line workers through a powerful video plus content to help keep them safe, such as information on how to clean our products across the full Zebra portfolio.”
A stronger emphasis has been placed on digital marketing.
“We’ve taken a ‘sense, analyze, act’ approach,” Armstrong said. “We ‘sense’ when visitors are on our digital properties, we ‘analyze’ that engagement and how we can best follow up with customized information on their next visit, and then we ‘act’ by engaging with our visitors and alerting our sellers where there’s interest to help progress the buyers’ journey and advance a potential sale.”
Without a vaccine and with cases booming in certain areas, some of these changes – especially remote work – may stay in effect well into 2021.
“We expect the world to have now leaped into the use of remote working tools. We expect people will work more from home than they used to, and we expect to see somewhat less business travel,” Ynvisible’s Kuusisto said. “However, this does not mean that the need for face-to-face meetings will completely disappear, but on-line tools will take working with clients and partners to a whole new level.
“With the pandemic on the minds of people, we expect there to be increased public interest in – and investments into – health, wellness and environmental issues. We see many opportunities for flexible and printed electronics in all this,” the CEO continued.
“With disruptions to international supply chains during COVID-19 lockdowns, we see advantages in setting up printed electronics manufacturing as a more widely distributed production technique – e.g. the production of our electrochromic displays is being developed for wide-scale adoption by production companies around the planet,” he concluded.
Searle also believes face-to-face meetings will eventually resume, but “people are now much more familiar using online conferencing applications for virtual meetings, which is a much more efficient use of time rather than traveling to meet.
“We predict that this will continue to be utilized more even after COVID-19, but will not totally replace in-person meetings,” he added.
In regards to remote work, Searle said, “With the improvements made in communication tools, there is a realization that many people can remain efficient working from home and it is felt that even after the pandemic, this could be more common across certain roles.”
Rice said TactoTek is developing “very effective” virtual work patterns and support systems.
“I expect that working from home, wherever that may be, will remain commonplace,” he said. “There are many benefits of that change, including removing geographic constraints for many roles and enabling both employees and employers to find their best match in a wider marketplace. It will require creativity and consistent effort to build the camaraderie that is so rewarding and valuable, particularly in an early growth company like TactoTek.
“While there’s nothing better than meeting in-person to learn from our customers, educate about our solutions, build successful partnerships and bridge divides, I don’t expect business travel to resume to the levels preceding the pandemic,” Rice concluded.
“Now everything is virtual and I can see that becoming more of a permanent situation,” Moss said. “The savings from a business standpoint is such an advantage – now you can do business remotely across time zones.”
Added Armstrong: “We anticipate the continued focus on digitization will remain critical with customers appreciating the convenience and efficiency of trends like e-commerce and buy online and pick-up in-store or curbside. We also believe flexible work options will remain vital as well, and the use of intelligent automation in a way that augments workers on the front-line to help them do their best – and safest – work is here to stay.”
Community Efforts
Companies also took an active role in their communities. Brewer Science places a particularly strong emphasis on community service, and worked closely to help its neighbors during COVID-19.
“Early on, we had some of our safety team doing mask fit testing at nursing homes,” said Nathan Ayres, communications manager, Brewer Science, Inc. “In the last month or so we have been producing hand sanitizer that we’ve been giving out to police, fire and local schools.”
Nanosys worked with a local non-profit Dragon School to sponsor its latest project – a mural painting by a local artist in Uptown Oakland.
“We see this as an opportunity to help give Oakland artists a voice so they can remind others of the importance of working together to unify and beautify their neighborhood, especially difficult times of financial crisis and social inequity,” Kempt said.
Zebra and its employees donated to the Red Cross, Armstrong said.
“We are also actively working with our customers and partners globally to provide healthcare products and services technology where the need is the greatest,” he said. “We also hosted our first-ever Global Week of Service last month, with more than 1,000 hours volunteered to support 45 organizations in 11 countries globally. Additionally, we’ve made significant strides to ensure our culture is one that is inclusive and diverse with expanded resources, a comprehensive I&D program, and the introduction of several new inclusion networks since the beginning of the year.”
