Coronavirus has taken over 2020. You can’t go anywhere—restaurants, shops, schools, etc.—without seeing something associated with the virus. Face masks or face shields protect everyone’s mouths, noses and sometimes eyes. Signs remind everyone to stay socially distanced and that they can’t enter stores without their masks.
COVID-19 has also affected how we work. Many now work remotely, at home with their families within arms length. But how has it affected the machining industry? In this post, we’ll drill into the ways Coronavirus has made an impression on machining.
Essential or Non-Essential
One challenge the machining industry has experienced with COVID-19 is the labeling. Several states called for all non-essential businesses to close their doors. Some machining shops have been able to stay open under that labeling. However, others were forced to close temporarily.
One such manufacturing shop was Weldon Solutions, which had to close its doors for two months. President and CEO, Travis Gentzler, recently talked to Modern Machine Shop about his experience having to appeal to reopen twice. He was finally able to reopen but learned a myriad of lessons through the process.
Decrease In Machine Orders
This is something most industries faced during COVID-19. The world was turned upside down. People weren’t traveling as much, and as we highlighted above, many shops were forced to close. Because of the uncertainty festering during the age of Coronavirus, many businesses are tightening their budgets. That means fewer orders, especially expensive orders such as machines.
To learn more about this, check out this report from Research and Markets.
Challenges with Social Distancing
Because of the nature of machining, it’s not as easy to go remote as it is with other industries. Inside the shops, it’s sometimes difficult to stay six feet away from others at all times. As we wrote about in our post Social Distancing for Manufacturers, there are ways to work around this such as making sure everything is extremely clean. But it has still proven a challenge.
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