It’s as if we’re all stuck in a post-New Year fug and yet to emerge blinking into the glare of 2020’s spotlight. So, while the latest edition of this popular composites event rolls into Paris on March 3^rd, it feels more a case of slow business rather than show business.

Changes in Europe’s economic landscape has left both exhibitors and visitors pondering over the tangible benefits that tradeshows offer their businesses. But taking too long to make up your mind could mean missing lucrative opportunities of meeting new customers. Equally, tradeshow organisers must be chewing their fingernails wondering how many people will actually turn up.

I’m featuring so many automation-related topics in Aerospace Manufacturing lately that I’m thinking of employing a robot arm to write all the copy for me and I simply dictate the words to it! It seems the capacity for large series mass production is this year’s big thing, and serves to highlight how a once manually-intensive industry is progressively being driven to automate and match the production speeds currently set by traditional metallic-based manufacturing techniques.

As we’re increasingly glued to our smart devices at present, it would appear that the engineers of tomorrow will be naturally predisposed in joining the next wave of robotic system programmers. Perhaps we’re moving from an age when robots were designed to be more human, to one where humans want to be more like robots.

The point being that whilst in some areas, composite part series production is still manually intensive and slow, JEC World will showcase those companies with the innovation and the motivation to revolutionise the manufacturing process.

Mike Richardson, editor