I'm a little breakaway and thank you for joining us. Welcome to today's webinar. My name is Arvin Maritz, my name is Arvin Maritz, I'm head of Product Solutions Solutions here at Sispro, and today we're going to be diving into the very heart of modern manufacturing. Now I'm thrilled to open the session today as we've brought together some truly sharp minds, including the leading expert from Frost & Sullivan, and three fantastic guest speakers, each with their own backstage bars to their a leader in the medical industry, a leader in the medical industry, a leader in the medical industry, and a world leader in the development and supply of both implantable grade plastics and biocompatible plastics for instrument applications. Unfortunately, Matthew, the CIO at Langs Building Supplies in Australia could not join us today. Now, we all know that manufacturers today are juggling a lot, whether it's parts that don't show up, systems that don't talk to one another, or that very formal and structured process. We all know that we're going to be able to incorporate the but sometimes scenario. Now, this in addition to adhering to the ever-changing and very complex regulatory requirements. According to Frost & Sullivan's latest research, which we will be unpacking today, the industry is evolving much faster than the budgets can keep up. Yet, there's a tremendous opportunity for those who can harness the smarter tech, who can streamline the business processes and operations, while not losing any sleep over the latest ERP update. So, wherever you are in the world today, sit back, buckle up, as we're going to explore the emerging trends, practical strategies, and yes, I'm sure even a few battle scars as we look at how real manufacturers are navigating this high-stakes battling act. So, without further ado, hand over to Hendrik. Brilliant. Herman, thank you so much. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Let me just get our lovely presentation up and running. Brilliant. So, thank you very much for all the introductions. So, I don't have to do that in any shape or form. Right. So, today's conversation is really built on the findings of CISPR's latest research conducted in collaboration with my firm, Frost & Sullivan, which provides an in-depth look at the trends and the challenges shaping the future of complex manufacturing, which is not an easy task in any shape or form, given everything that Herman has mentioned. Now, you know, we talk about rapid technological advancement, supply chain disruptions involving customer expectations, sort of the increased, you know, pressures on sustainability, et cetera, et cetera. And it all essentially means that manufacturers are facing an unprecedented level of complexity in their business. Now, the study that we conducted really, it aims to offer some valuable insights into how industry leaders are responding and themes that the, that the study covers essentially around sort of balancing digital transformation on the one side, workforce integration, navigating operational hurdles, rethinking long-term strategies in line with industry 5.0 principles, et cetera, et cetera. And if you want to get hold of the study, sort of, we'll make the link available to you a bit later, and then, you know, we'll work through, or you can work through some of the outputs in your own time. But our goal today is really to unpack some of these insights with some real-world perspectives, you know, from CISPR's clients. So, you know, giving you some practical takeaways, hopefully today on how to stay competitive and then also resilient in this very much evolving landscape. Now, just a bit of background, you know, to the study, you know, just taking a look at the, just taking a look at the approach and methodology. Won't spend too much time on this, but Foster Sullivan took a structured and iterative approach, sort of, to the study, meaning that we essentially learned through some of the output as, you know, we went along with the study, just to maximize some of the insights. The study did integrate a combination of primary and secondary research, which is really important in cases like this, because what's happening necessarily on paper is not necessarily always what happens in practice, as we'll most likely hear today from our panelists. And it was a real privilege, I think, to speak to executives from across the globe. You know, so we did interviews, extracting probably about, regionally, 300 data points through some of those discussions. We did a formalized survey, extracting another sort of almost 300 data points from that, and then we combined that with some of the existing secondary research, which we, where we felt, you know, we could access repeatable reports, including some of the insights from Frost and Sullivan's market intelligence database. And then all of that is formally referenced in the document for your convenience. So, if you want to read a bit more on particular topics or themes, you can just click, click on some of those links, and then, you know, we can move forward. Right. So, for our agenda for the discussion today, we'll be focusing the conversation on four key themes. So, firstly, you know, how Industry 5.0 is shaping the future of complex manufacturing. Is it hype? Is it another buzzword we need to file somewhere? Or does it have real value for how we evaluate technology and technology investment? The second theme is around key trends shaping smart technology adoption in complex manufacturing. And we, the report also takes sort of quite a few angles in the way that it looks at, you know, prior technologies that are having an influence on the industry on the one side, you know, you know, what are companies investing in on the other and the level of influence that it has on complex manufacturing. Thirdly, we'll take a look at some of the implementation challenges. And I think there's a lot of insight that we can generate, you know, from our panel members today, specifically on how they've mitigated that. And then we'll end off with a bit of a future outlook from our panelists and taking a look at how they see the future, you know, the future, you know, of advanced manufacturing from a technology perspective and beyond. Right, so the first theme, Industry 5.0 is important to establish why this is so important to understand and consider for decision making. Now, the definition of Industry 5.0 really involves around the fact that it's the next formative phase of manufacturing, right? So it emphasizes that human machine collaboration, you know, leveraging advanced technologies like AI and IoT, you know, in conjunction with human intelligence to enable a better outcome. So resulting in enhanced productivity, deliver customized data. Excuse me, Hendrik. Sorry to interrupt you. We're still on the first slide there. So I think it's mine. It's mine has moved. Let me stop sharing. And see if we can get up when to actually play along. All right, let's have a look here. Share that window. Right, the presentation is up. That I can see. Okay, let me go presentation mode because I can't actually see if the slides are moving along if I'm in presentation mode. Right, so if I move forward. Does it move forward? No, the page has not moved. Oh, goodness. Oh, it's some little technical issue that we've got to address, right? So I tell you what, I'll do the following. I'm going to share the screen as opposed to the window. Maybe that works for us. All right, I'll do the following. All right, I can see that popping up. Yeah, if I move back to Industry 5.0, does it move with me? Ah, brilliant. Yes, it moves with you. Perfect. Thanks for picking that up, Kelly. All right, so just interrupt me if for some reason we, it does the same. Does the same little glitch and then we can just restart the share. All right, so where were we? So we were talking about Industry 5.0. We were talking about the relevant Industry 5.0. So the definition thereof. So resulting hopefully in productivity and increased levels of mass customization, sustainability. So Industry 4.0 has an emphasis on technology adoption and deployment. 5.0 will focus on striking a better balance between humans and machines. And hence, you know, there's an emphasis on things like cobots to make decisions, et cetera, et cetera. So it's very much a value-centric approach as opposed to a technology-centric approach, which is critical given the hype around technology in general at present. It's very difficult sometimes to distinguish between sort of what are the things that we should be paying attention to, so what is real and what is as advanced as people are trying to make it, you know, look like and sort of what is just hype, you know, what is just general speak. And if you think back in the data of cloud technology, you know, we were talking about cloud for a good 10, 12 years before we saw significant updates or uptake rather in cloud. And it's the same with things like artificial intelligence, which we'll see as part of the research. So the importance of 5.0, just before we get into the panel discussion, is it's the context within which feature technology investments need to be evaluated with it. So when we look at technology and evaluations for tech investment, you know, we take a look at projected technology roadmaps, so patents being registered, R&D lab focus areas, academic papers, VC investments, and it allows us essentially to eliminate the risk of being disintermediated by some other technology during the productive life cycle of the asset. Now, the challenge, though, is that that is becoming increasingly difficult to do given the pace of change. So we've reverted to a methodology where we take a look at industry 5.0 and all the research around it, and that provides an additional layer or an additional level of perspective that we can use in order to evaluate any kind of technological investment that we need to make, an evaluation framework, so to speak, for when our investments, you know, will come to fruition. And hence, it's important, you know, when we talk about these trends. Now, turning to our panel members, so Mario, so you're first up. So my first question to you is, are you seeing this shift, you know, to the human tech collaboration already? Or is this something that you're keeping tabs on? Is it on your horizon? Give us your thoughts on that human tech collaboration trend. Hi, yes, there's a significant and growing shift towards human and technology collaboration across industries. Rather than replacing humans, technology is increasingly being designed to augmenting human capabilities. Great synergies where each complement the other strengths. Key trends that support this shift is augmentation over replacement. For example, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft 365, all of them assist professionals without eliminating jobs. I mean, and I guess that sort of that final part is quite important to emphasize the fact that, I mean, we have not seen a reduction in the level of employment necessarily, based on any technological development over the past 30, 40, 50 years. There are certain types of skills that become irrelevant, you know, but typically it does lead to a broader base of employment. And I think, given where industry 5.0 is heading, you know, we need to focus on how to work. So we foster, you know, we foster, you know, some of that collaboration element sort of between humans and between machines to be able to, as you mentioned, augment our decision making, you know, as opposed to just circumventing the human factor, which at this stage and for the foreseeable future is not really an option. Mark, from your side, I mean, you obviously operate, you know, from the UK. So we didn't sort of mention where everybody was from, but Mario is sitting in South Africa. Sort of Mark is sitting in the UK. Matthew would have been from Australia, but unfortunately you can't make it this morning. But from your side, Mark, how does sustainability factor in your strategy at the moment? There's obviously a big push towards sustainability as one of the key pillars, I guess, of Industry 5.0 as well. But how does sustainability factor in your strategy? In the UK, what we've done here to keep sustainability is like Mario said, we're not losing people. What we're doing, the business is growing, but we're not employing people. Our business has probably, I would say, quadrupled. We've gone from like 20 million ever since we first started it to turning over 140 million. And we do not. The sustainability is because we have that integration of five helping us get through it and not having to take more people on. The only people we take on now is probably on the shop floor for the machines. But everything talks and sustainability wise, we, you know, it's really is taking off in our industry. Right. Right. And I mean, just to kind of add to some of those insights from Maria and from Mark. I do the vast majority of my work in sub-Saharan Africa. So it's very much developing worlds. And we often need to look at developing world applications, you know, for some of these advanced technologies. Now, augmented reality and virtual reality, I always, you know, see as a great training and reskilling tool for the region. You know, a lot of people are concerned about the fact that Africa's workforce is very young, you know, median age being, I think, just over 18 years old, you know, compared to, you know, 45 in Japan, et cetera, et cetera. You know, but there's a skill issue. Now we can use a lot of these technologies for reskilling, you know, so combining, so for instance, augmented and virtual reality with something like natural language recognition. You know, you can bring a lot of the unskilled into the digitally sort of literate sort of domain. in order to be able to manufacture whatever you need to manufacture as opposed to users looking for skills overseas or then sort of locating factories overseas necessarily. So there are a lot of options, I think, in order to bring that workforce sort of into industry 5.0, you know, by leveraging the technologies associated with it. Right. So taking a look at some of the trends that are shaping sort of the complex manufacturing sector. So Kelly just confirmed that the slide moved to the next slide just to make sure that we're not stuck on the previous one again. Brilliant. Yes, I can see it, Trent. Thank you for confirming. So these are trends respondents confirmed which are shaping the sector. Now it's important to note that this is not a reflection of their investment priorities at present. That's a bit later in the document. But, you know, the CISPA report outlines six major trends influencing the direction of complex manufacturing. that's one. So we're not in the current technology. So we're talking about how emerging smart technologies is one. So, so accelerated adoption specifically of technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, industrial IoT, etc., etc., investing in sustainability. So integrating ESG goals into core strategy. And, you know, what is very interesting is that, you know, a lot of the ECG priorities, you know, for companies are not necessarily, you know, things that just cost money, but on the contrary, it actually saves money. So a lot of it focuses on efficiency. So for instance, advanced manufacturing, there's a really interesting conversation around, you know, investment and sustainability. And there's also the red flag that pops up again, and that's additional cost and there's regulation, etc., etc. And there is an element of that, but there's also an element of cost saving. Evolving government policies, adapting to increasing regulation and incentives, global trade disruptions, which we've already mentioned, so prompting localized and resilient supply chains, workforce demographics, specifically related to general shifts and digital scale. skills gap, which we've spoken about, skills gap, which we've spoken about. And then also customer expectations for personalization. So the rise of the bond for high volume, custom and high quality output. So these are some of the trends, you know, that the respondents felt were shaping the complex manufacturing sector, you know, for the foreseeable future. So Mario, sort of back to you, which of the trends that you can see on the screen are most shaping your strategy today? I would say all six are significantly shaping business strategy today. But the relative importance depends on your industry, geography and organizational priorities. For me, the trend that is most shaping strategy today is emerging smart technologies. It's AI, robotics and IoT. And it matters because AI and automation is revolutionizing efficiency efficiency, like example, predictive maintenance, hyper personalization. IoT enables real time data driven decision making in manufacturing and logistics. The key takeaway for this is the most transformative strategies integrate multiple trends. For example, a manufacturer might combine IoT with localized supply chains and green production to future and technology-proof operations. Great. And then Mark from your side. I mean, we always hear about the European regulations increasing all the time and providing quite a lot of pressure on manufacturing institutions, but other businesses, I guess, as well. So how are you navigating external pressures like regulation and trade uncertainty, you know, as part of our strategy? Yeah. Trade uncertainty, as you all know, with the American market at the moment. And I think 60, 70% of our business is in America. The way we're negotiating it through, we do have landed cost tracking. So that's part of it. But we've actually had to change our negotiations for most of our customers to go X works because it's so volatile at the moment. And you can see even Jaguar land. And you can see even Jaguar Land Rover. They've stopped trading with America for a month until it's all the political landscape has actually calmed down. So at this moment, it is quite difficult. But we do have the technologies to help us with the software. And it's like Mario said, the IoT stuff where it's all integrated, it's starting to help us because we've got the supply chain. And customer links. And customer links. And customer links. That just makes it a lot easier for us. The difficulty is being is because it's changing every 30 days. When you know with the political landscape. So at the moment, we're holding fast just to see because we don't know what's coming in the next 30 days or whatever. So we're having to do it and review it with regular. Yeah, regular intervals. I mean, one of the interesting things are so just thinking back of sort of on the Brexit days, which obviously, you know, introduced quite a lot of trade uncertainty as well for the UK in particular for a long period of time. And, you know, one of the things that Frost Solomon did back in the day was to as opposed to trying to predict what the outcome was going to be, which is a, you know, futile exercise, you know, that point in time, because, you know, you obviously had a whole range of outcomes quite similar to what we are facing today. You know, we developed specific scenarios, and then we enabled the organization to try to respond to those scenarios, depending on which one pans out. So as opposed to trying to predict, you know, what the outcome was going to be, rather prepare the organization depending on, you know, different types of outcome, you know, of sort of the referendum, and then obviously sort of some of the trade negotiations between the EU and the UK at that stage, which was a much more tangible exercise. So what we're going to do is to go through in order to be able to address uncertainty as opposed to, again, trying to predict the future, which is given the fact that a lot of the decision aren't necessarily commercially driven, but politically driven, you know, it becomes extremely difficult to determine the outcomes. So this is going to be one of the questions that I was going to pose to Matthew. So I thought I might pose it to both of you. And it's around the alignment of smart technology adoption with customer demand. So are you utilizing any of these technological advancements in order to align better, you know, with the customer demand? We're seeing a lot of focus areas, obviously, on the manufacturing itself, sort of the monitoring and the efficiency components, etc., etc., and adjusting to different regulation and all of that. But from a customer alignment perspective, are there things that you are, are there things that you are utilizing and utilizing the technologies that are utilizing in order to align better with your customers? Mario, Mark, anyone who's ready? If you can comment on that. Yeah, we use the the API's to do everything automatically that comes in, which means we've got better communications with our customers. So we will we'll send everything out electronically from the dispatch notes, the advanced shipping notes to the invoices, we take all the orders in all the orders in that way. So technology wise, we're using it quite heavily. The only thing we do have a problem is, like you said, when we hit Brexit, things do take longer to come in because they're held at customs. So again, it's just how you manage it and put it into perspective of what you put in on your lead times, as long as you know what what's coming in the future, automatic customer orders are coming in. So we we have a we've written something called which is a site, which is sales inventory and optimization planning. So we know straight away what's coming in. And that's what we do. It's virtually automatic. So it's quite good. Right. So they're streamlining the communication element. And Mario, I know that that sort of you guys recently sort of moved over onto the system, Syspro platform. So I guess some of it will be will be still a bit new. But are you utilizing technology at this stage in order to communicate with customers? Not with customers at the moment, because it's still pretty new and migrating from a custom built ERP system to Syspro does take some time and some planning. So we are in the initial stages of getting everything up and running. But like Mark said, is we are utilizing APIs and the e.net solution to communicate with Syspro from other sources. And this can be from clients or from suppliers or from machines. So, yeah, we are utilizing that to leverage some more potential out of the system. Right. What are you saying? We use the business objects a lot to communicate with all our third party systems. That's from rotor mats on the shop floor to machines, turning machines, milling machines, all the business objects. It'll pull information out. We can read it in the APIs. The business object side of it. It makes it so easy for us to do. Brilliant. And that kind of gets us to, you know, the next part of the discussion focusing on some of the emerging sort of smart technologies that we uncovered during the survey. And, you know, not surprisingly, I guess 58 % recognized industrial IoT and artificial intelligence, you know, as most promising. So on the left hand side of the slide, you can see the what technologies, but maybe the equally important you know, as our conversation, you know, as our conversation. So to turn to it, so just now as well, it's to understand how they are being implemented via ERP solutions to drive sort of business objectives. Now, interestingly, our study showed that about 57% of companies have partially implemented new technologies only, with another 40% using sort of POCs at present. So fully implemented and live examples were extremely hard to find during the survey process. And therefore, from an investment perspective, you know, it's important to understand that artificial intelligence, et cetera, is very much in exploratory phase, still at present for the vast majority of companies. We're seeing a lot of talk about it, a lot of hype around it. If you take a look at the, you know, the amount of financial statement releases from some of the listed companies, the word artificial intelligence is being splattered over each and every single aspect of their business. But once you start getting into the nuts and bolts of it, a very small, small amount of organizations have actually implemented at enterprise level, you know, up to this point. And again, sort of the example of cloud, we're talking about AI, but we're not necessarily implementing it across the organization. And the main reason that we picked up was really around the fact that value creation ability of AI is often still uncertain, depending on whatever application you try to drive. And it's still quite expensive, although I guess China might sort that out for us in the, in the, in the short medium term, but it's still relatively expensive, you know, to, to implement. Now, Mario, I mean, from your perspective, and I know, again, sort of, you guys have made quite a lot of shifts of, of late, but, you know, what technologies have you adopted and what drove those decisions specifically, sort of, at a strategic decision-making level? In the past, we, well, we, we had a custom ERP system. And from that, we built our website. And from that, we did an Android application to hand to the pickers in the warehouse. We did some QR codes for all the parts that came out of the laser cutters and each location in the, in the store for, for your warehouse management system. This improved picking, warehouse picking, and supply to the line quite drastically where the guys who pick, have the list on the phone to see exactly what they should pick, where to get it. And yeah, they, they just finished their list for the, for the day. And then when the, as soon as the list is finished, they know that they can go home. But yeah, we have implemented mobile devices with QR code scanning robots, which perform repetitive tasks, real-time feedback from robots to make data-driven decisions. And then something we looked at, and then something we looked at, but did not implement yet, was to, to, to use AR glasses for picking, where the wearer speakers would only wear the glasses, leaving both hands free, and using AI to generate the most efficient picking routes. The glasses then also scans the QR codes in real time to show exactly what bin to pick from. But yeah, that was still in planning phase. And some of the restrictions like costs and, time is always a factor that, time is always a factor that, versus, so, we, yeah, we moved on to something else. But that is, maybe still in the pipeline. And what drove those decisions was mostly, efficiency, to be more efficient at what we do. In order to scale up production, we have to constantly reinvent ourselves. So many toys at all the time, right? Mark, on your side, I mean, I know that you are quite advanced with, if you are, you moved over to the Syspra system, I think, quite a long period of time ago, and you've, you've also done quite a lot of upgrading of legacy systems. Are there particular technologies that you've adopted? Can you maybe give us a bit of an indication of, of, you know, how those decisions were made as well? The business grows. And even though we are, I would say, a well established part of Syspro companies, we've actually upgraded about three times and had no problem with the business objects. It, it, we currently put 35,000 jobs through the shop floor, and all that, um, picking and, um, it all goes through what's called Rotomat. So all the jobs are on a Rotomat. It controls it automatically, all the AI technology. So if you think about the amount of jobs going through a shop floor, 35,000 is a lot of jobs, because it's a lot of needs and hips we're making. Um, so technology is important to us, because it, we, it's, we don't want the admin. Uh, we want to make it easy for the people on the shop floor. So we've got Rotomats, we've got Automatic, where they can look at the shop floor. They can look at, at, at, at, at set up sheets. They can look up, um, the, the drawings, everything. So we are using all that technology and all that, because Syspro is so good with the business objects and everything is we can, we, we can just upgrade it. So we are a steady manufacturing, but remember, businesses always change and you've got to go with what the new technology is. So we, my job is not just, to sit here and say, it's implemented. It's to go and look at what that new technology is and try improve the process flows. So we do look at it all the time of what's coming out. And I mean, and how do you, how do you measure return on investment? And, and it's a bit of a loaded question because, you know, quite often, and I've heard this so many times in boardrooms where, you know, the answer is, you know, we, we need to evaluate technology in a different way. To any other investments or whether it be capital investment or other kinds of operational expenditure, you know, technology sometimes, um, you know, got this, I don't know, the separate bucket or the separate category and the way that decisions get made. But how do you measure return on investment for any new technology investment that you, um, that you're looking at? You see, I, in, in our industry, I'm very, very, very lucky is that, um, I've got a board who actually support me, um, with new technologies. If there's anything out there that I, I, I, I need, they will support me. I don't, there are returns on investment, but as long as it will create me capacity on the shop floor, as long as it, I say people, um, for, for a company this size, we've got one person in accounts payable, one person in accounts, receivable, receivable, and the turnover is 140 million. What other, and that's all because we're using technology. We use scanners to scan the invoices in, um, automatically use the business objects to pay them and match them to GRNs. So as long as it's there and they see a saving and the business is still growing and we're not taking the, in, the indirects on, then they're happy. That's what they look at. I guess you're quite fortunate in that. Sort of, you mentioned that your board is, is, you know, quite technology savvy or at least pro technology. I think, you know, as, as part of all the discussions, you know, there's no excuse these days, you know, to have somebody on your executive committee or on the board of directors for that matter, you know, who does not have a good understanding of, of technology. We, we, we're not necessarily, you know, a techie by, uh, definition. So that doesn't necessarily have a technology background. or education around, but they have an understanding of how technology can add value. I mean, one of the key things that we always look at when we are evaluating new technology is, number one, identifying the main value associated with implementing it, and that needs to fall into one of three categories. You mentioned the first one, which is obviously cost reduction. You need to have a very strong relationship between your understanding of the capital investment on the one side of the operating expenditure and the cost reduction that that will produce. Revenue generation, number two, and number three, customer experience, to the extent where you can measure the reduced level of churn associated with customers based on that technology application. So that return on investment conversation really revolves around understanding that relationship extremely well and also not getting caught in discussions like, oh, we can do this, but we can also do that. And, you know, if you apply it in this particular way, it can do something different, you know, which is extremely challenging for commercially focused board members to then ultimately make a decision over management committee members. And then a question again, sort of for both of you, how has this changed workforce dynamics, if at all? So, Mark, you mentioned the fact that, I mean, despite the fact that you're a very sizable organization, obviously, you only, you've only got a handful of individuals in what would be termed in what would be termed administrative functions. So, administrative and finance functions. You know, have you seen any other workforce dynamics change as a result of taking on board some of these technologies? I think Mario actually put it, is you are struggling to get people on the shop floor nowadays. But remember, when anybody joins a business now, they're used to having a mobile phone. So they're used to technology. In the old days, you had to sort of, you had to teach them to go through it. But they're used to it nowadays. It's, it's, it is, it's benefited people on the shop floor because it makes their life easier because the communication side of it is really important. And because they have mobile phones, it is a big computer. It's a thousand pound computer that sits in the hand every day. And so they're used to that technology. And that sometimes they'll come and come to me and go, why does it not do that? Why does it not? I can do that there. So we then go back and we think, you know, we want, we want to look at the user experience for them as well. So it's, it's important to go and talk to the people and see what they want from a user experience. I don't know if that, what Mario's found as well when he's been doing it. Yes, exactly the same. As soon as we released the mobile application and showed, obviously we had resistance to change and people don't want to change because they're used to doing it in a certain way. But as soon as they realized that this is actually there to make their life easier, it's like a light bulb went on. And we actually, we opened a channel back in the day just for new requests where people can tell us what do they do. And I think we'll, we'll make their life even more easier by adding to this. So every new update that came out was actually embraced instead of, you know, it's a new update. Interesting. Yeah. But what I give it, I give them a win and once they see the win, they buy in. So we don't get that resistance to change. They then start coming to me. So if you give them a nice little win, first of all, the resistance is there. Yeah. Yeah. You give them that little win and then they'll start coming back with what they, you know, that for their user experience to make it easier. And it is breaking that first, that first element of giving them something to get that resistance, which is what Mario said. Yeah. Like, just, I think why it matters is that the future isn't humans or technologies, humans and technology. And the most successful organizations will be those that leverage technology to amplify human potential while addressing challenges like reskilling and sustainability. We, we, people are afraid that AI will replace them. And it's not the case. AI is actually just a tool. It's something to help them to repeat repetitive tasks and to free up your resources, your humans to do things that they are supposed to do. Well, better at them than robots or machines. And it's decision-making, it's empathy, you know, all those kinds of human skills that you can't teach a robot. And I mean, it's just, it's just referring Mark back to your comment around the fact that a lot of, a very large proportion of individuals, obviously you've got it, even in a developing country like South Africa, you know, where Mario is based, smartphone penetration is pretty decent. So, I mean, you are interacting with quite a complex device, you know, sort of that user interface is quite similar, you know, for a number of other technology applications. So it already prepares individuals, despite the fact that they might not have extensive technology exposure leading up to the point that they might join you as part of your workforce. There's intuitively, you know, a level, a set of skills that's already there or back of some of the smartphone penetration and interaction, which is great. And it kind of leads us quite nicely into kind of the next conversation, which is around the barriers to implementing advanced technologies. And both of you have alluded to some of the things that you've done, you know, in order to breach that gap and address some of the angst and the resistance to change. But taking a look at some of the challenges, 25% said cost, 22% resistance to change, 19% expertise, 43% said integration with legacy systems, and then 40%, 43% said, 43% said cybersecurity concerns. Now, you know, these challenges are clearly both a combination of technical challenge on the one side, but cultural as well within the, you know, the realm of industry 5.0. I mean, on the cybersecurity side, I think it was the IBM report that came out last year that said the average cost of a security breach of an enterprise level organization, about 5 million New Year's dollars per breach last year. And the total amount that cybercrime is costing us globally is around the 10 trillion mark in 2024. I mean, that's roughly the size of the German economy. So it's immense in the magnitude of the challenges that we, you know, that we face. So Mario, I mean, from your perspective, and again, you guys have moved quite recently over to the ERP platform. So what implementation barriers did you face? And how did you specifically handle sort of the internal resistance associated with that? Challenges, cost, and integration with legacy systems are definitely on the list. But mostly, I would say it was resistance to change. The legacy system that I'm talking about was people have been using it for 40, 40 plus years, I think. And they're used to doing something, and it's not to take anything away from it. It's custom-made for them. So it's doing a lot of stuff that you can't buy off the shelf. And showing them a new system which cannot do all this fancy stuff right out of the box is quite a problem. And then you get the resistance to change. But showing them how you handle this, to show them what new features the software has, how it can make the life easier with all the new tools at their disposal. And obviously, a lot of hand-holding does the trick to bring about the shift in thinking. Mm-hmm. And then, Matthew, from your perspective, and you are quite advanced with your integration and upgrading of legacy systems. I mean, the majority of those systems, my understanding is that they've already been upgraded. But strategies for managing legacy systems from your end? The integration to, like, I went looking at every single one of those questions. They're all actually entwined, every single one of those. Like I said, I've got a good FD who will invest, who invests me and gives me the correct investment side. My resistance to change, as soon as I've created an SME, I know most people here, we call them SME, which is subject matter experts. If I get buying from those people. Integration, I don't have a problem with any integration of legacy systems. Because looking at the security side, we've always kept, we're up to date on every bit of technology. If we have old machines, we put in the budget that they go to the latest version of Windows and the integration's already there. So all the lab equipment is linked. All the equipment on the shop floor is linked. So if you do your security side of it, then we don't have any problems. Integrations, I know it said 43%. We have no problems with business objects and APIs to any of that. So if I was answering those questions, that integration to the legacy systems, I don't have a problem. Because if I've kept the legacy systems up to date, if to communicate, I do not have a problem at all. So they're all linked. Every single one of them is linked. And you can't just say, well, 43% people don't do that. Because you have to have done all four or five of those to make it go through. And then in terms of addressing the skills gap specifically, and Mario, I'm going to ask you the same question, because you obviously have a very different operating environment in South Africa compared to Mark in the UK. But how are you addressing the skills gap that a lot of people the manufacturers are concerned about the manufacturers are concerned about and struggling with? Is it just a case of extensive training? I mean, how are you guys sort of addressing that? Yeah, it's just upskilling people and it's adding new people. Yeah, that's about it. We do internal training as well. But try to mitigate that as best we can. Sure, sure. And get the people in. So we've got the apprentices coming in. But the last time we went to the exhibition in the NEC, people are now bringing in more and more robots. It was full of robots last year. Four years ago, when they did the same show, you never saw one. Every stand has now got a robot. That when we're going to exhibitions. So that's the future. It's coming. So, you know, there is a skills shortage. And when you talk to them on the stands, they say, well, why have you done it? And they go, well, because we know there's a shortage of people in CNC machines turning. So we've looked at it and taken apprentices on because not everybody wants to come out of university in the UK with 40,000, 50,000 pounds worth of debt anymore. So the market is changing now where before you couldn't get the skills yet because they were all going off to university. Very interesting trend, right? Yeah. Right. So we're starting here to head towards sort of the end of the panel discussion. But I thought it would be great to hear from both of you just, you know, your future outlook. So, you know, take a look at the roadmap for the next two to three years, you know, given the fact that from a developmental perspective and implementation perspective, both of you are on very different stages. But, you know, what is that roadmap? What does that roadmap look like over the next two to three years? You know, does sustainability feature, you know, elaborate a bit on your vision, I guess, for your organization and for the industry over the foreseeable future? Mario, you can start off and then we can end with Mark. Like I said, we've got a custom ERP system that I was a big part of in Booster and also in Belgium is another custom ERP system. So roadmap for the next two to three years is moving to Syspro and also getting other software aligned between our two branches or between the two companies. The one is Winchell and other one is the nesting software and the Troom software and to get everything talking but to have a centralized repository for everything. From there, I think we will start looking at more advanced technologies like AI and how we can leverage the data that we already have. But for the immediate future, it's just to get everything and everyone on the new ERP system. That will also help with sustainability because as you know, with custom ERP systems, you are bound to a single or a single individual for a company that is dangerous for a company that is dangerous for the companies. With a company like Syspro or a company like any big ERP SAP or something, you future-proof your technology and your future in the technology sector. Sure, sure. Mark? Yeah, sustainability is like you said, Syspro is we've already gone through three upgrades. I've no problems with it. We just put it onto another box, test every transaction we do and it's gone smooth all the time and that is because they've invested in time on the business object side of it. It's made that integration so easier for you to start upgrading most people. Most people legacy systems, you're stuck there forever and a day and that's why people then go and look for a new computer system and that's when all the changes come in. With Syspro and sustainability side of it, it is easier and they've made it, they've looked at why people change computer systems and it goes, well, because people can't change it. They've not been like that. They've been open. They've looked at what the trends are going to be and they've made it a lot easier. So our future roadmap, the business, remember we've gone from 20 to 140 million. We're going to go, the thing is we're going to grow again to 200 million and then even further over the next couple of years. And I know the business will just work on the platforms we've got installed. That's amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing, Greg, as well. And then the final parting question, Murray again, we'll start with you and then sort of move over to Mark. But if you were to give advice, you know, to companies starting this digital transformation journey, I mean, what would that be? If you had the ability to put a billboard up, you know, with one particular piece of advice, you know, for new companies or for companies rather starting with their digital transformation journey, sort of what would that be? Mario? Definitely to start small instead of trying to implement everything at once with a big bang approach where normally you would run into time constraints and then people get frustrated. And as soon as you lose the people, the battle is halfway lost. So start small and give them small wins and introduce them to the technology in small batches, which you can roll out quickly. And as soon as you do that, you win the people and future-proof any new development that comes out. And during that, and if you've got that, then you buy yourself time where you can say, okay, it's proven with a small update status. But the big update will take some more time. And then you've got that. Brilliant. Mark? Yeah, I agree with everything you said. You start small, do the little wins. But you've got to have the communications. I don't know what you call it in South Africa, either a dealer or distributor or a channel partner, you've got to talk to them. They've got to be able to show you what's available in CISPRO. So if you have a good partner to work with, that's what you really want. I don't know what it's called in South Africa. But if you've got a good dealer or a distributor, then the communication, it's key. It's key for you going to implement it as well. So you've got to get buy-ins from outside and you've got to get that knowledge. And that knowledge has got to be transferred to your subject matter experts within your company. So that's what it is. Communications is key. Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant. Gentlemen, I want to thank you for your incredible insight today. It's been a really fruitful discussion. You know, we miss Matthew, but we have plenty of insight coming from the two of you. Thank you so much, Mario, Mark. And with that, I'm going to hand back to Herman to take us to the closure. Thank you very much. And that brings us to the end of today's session. Thank you for speaking with us. And you, Dick, thank you for your time. Thank you for talking us through the survey that you guys conducted. I'd say you made us all feel a little bit smarter, a little bit more aware of just how much work we have ahead of us. And I think personally, if there's one thing I've learned today, it's that modern manufacturing might be complex, but it's definitely not impossible. And between understanding from Mark and Mario is just with the right people, the right system and the willingness to evolve. And manufacturers can not only survive, but also lead. So to our guest speakers, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your experience. And for everybody online, thank you for joining us on this call. And if you want to see a little bit more, the discussion will continue on LinkedIn and the recording will be emailed out. So please feel free to. reach out at any point. So on behalf of all of us here today. Thank you for your time. And thank you for engaging till next time. Thank you very much. Cheers. Thank you.