The Drivers for Remote working
The COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing recommendations have forced everyone to work remotely or shift a significant part of their work to a remote mode.
This emerging environment of lockdowns and travel restrictions is only one driver in the trend and push to remote working. Another driver is the possibility of access to specialized skills of individuals or teams at remote locations, sometimes on the other side of the world! The desire of staff to reduce commute time and achieve a better work life balance is also increasing.To attract and retain the best talent, organizations are often choosing to include a component of remote working into their standard office practise. Sales personnel have always had to do a considerable part of their work out of their office.
Advantages of this organization structure include the possibility to minimize overhead costs, reduce time required for communication and feedback, increase productivity, and speed up the completion of projects.
The Enabling Environment
The emergence of the internet and the reliable and fast connectivity has empowered this mode of working. Collaboration tools are available to support remote working, and leading the pack are the office automation tools which handle documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and increasingly varied information formats. Email is increasingly used to send links to artefacts rather than the artefact itself.
Issues for Engineering Applications
Engineering organizations have often experienced the limitations of purely document driven cloud processes. A variety of formats and individualized representations of information make understanding and communication tedious and in some cases may cause errors.
Specialized tools which capture the information adequately in a model which can be easily created, shared and used for collaboration are the need of the hour. The time spent in recreating the same information is saved and can be invested into making design better, focusing on the function and purpose of the activity.
MAWP has been created with this objective in mind for the pressure vessel industry. Specific focus has been given to making the software easy to use and intuitive, and to make it’s coverage broad enough to meet the needs of the organization starting from the sales and proposals department through to the making of drawings. Manufacturing personnel and project staff can also view the threeD models to better understand the design well before the release of final documents enabling early feedback and reviews leading to improved design and faster throughput.
All in all such tools have the potential to transform companies through collaboration and speed.