Plexus predicts 6 key trends for 2023 from healthcare to sustainability

Plexus works with customers in industries structured around demanding regulatory frameworks and involve highly complex products. As a result, it strives to stay ahead of the curve to provide its customers the best support possible as they navigate a constantly evolving landscape of challenges and opportunities.

Each year, Plexus asks experts from across the global Plexus team to anticipate the key trends that expected to dominate the agenda in the next year. They identified the following for 2023:

The future of energy management

As organisations mobilise to decarbonise their processes, finding new ways to manage and reduce energy consumption has become essential. Bigger companies are able to be more ambitious when it comes to setting net-zero targets, but across the board we expect investment in renewable energy infrastructure to increase significantly in 2023. EV destination charging in particular is identified as an area of growth as businesses look to prioritise the electrification of their transportation networks.

The number of EV chargers in the UK increased by 34% in 2022 offering a clear indication of the direction of travel. Similarly, the use of hydrogen as an energy source to power heavy industrial equipment and processes is something manufacturers worldwide are beginning to explore. Meanwhile, the vast scale-up of battery-based electricity storage infrastructure is widely seen as central to the UK and Europe’s net-zero ambitions.

The importance of sustaining services

Reducing waste at every stage of a product’s lifecycle is one of several benefits of having a fully integrated aftermarket services strategy. Likewise, being more efficient in your use of materials will enable you to contribute more substantially to a sustainable circular economy.

This, in turn, will help to improve the relationship with your customer base and channels. Furthermore, protecting product performance will in turn insulate your business against rising component costs. Manufacturers are continuing to appreciate the value of being able to manage the longevity of a product’s lifespan in the design phase – from both an ESG and cost-efficiency perspective.

For these reasons, we predict that manufacturers will focus on scaling their aftermarket services capability more rapidly in 2023 and beyond.

Aerospace and defence facing challenges

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing customers in the aerospace and defence sector is the reality of supply-chain disruptions arising from a confluence of industry-wide and geopolitical factors. It is said that war is often the mother of invention but innovation has been stymied by ongoing material and workforce shortages. In order to meet the demands of governments as the conflict continues into 2023, suppliers will need to strategically adjust their operations plan to become more agile and deliver high-quality, cost-competitive products at speed.

Another trend we have observed in the sector is the capacity / capability gap between non-traditional aerospace and defence start-ups and their established counterparts.

While these newcomers are shifting the competitive landscape with innovative and disruptive technologies, they may need expert support in areas such as supply chain risk management and full-scale manufacturing if they are to realise their growth goals. It is our view that these start-ups will increasingly look to secure partnerships with established industry leaders to help them scale in a sustainable and cost-effective manner.

Supply chain reinvention

Organisations in all sectors are having to rethink their supply chain strategy. Some have taken steps to build out their existing supply chain more comprehensively, while others have reconfigured them altogether.

Either way, it has become necessary to ensure alternatives are readily available to ensure flexibility in purchasing. Using the Plexus supply chain mitigation risk toolset, we have been able to help a number of partners manage and overcome risk in their supply chains. As an example, we have developed processes for identifying and addressing the supply chain impact from critical events, which we relied on heavily to mobilise quickly during the pandemic.

These processes gave us real-time awareness of changing lockdown restrictions, business changes and port changes, enabling our teams to react quickly to a rapidly evolving situation. Furthermore, through combining external data sources with our internal tools, we were able to understand the potential impact to our customers immediately.

Our teams inherently view global collaboration and coordination as a normal course of business. We will continue to deliver for all our customers to support their supply chain needs into 2023.

Healthcare three years on

The response of healthcare and life sciences companies to the pandemic has been nothing short of awe-inspiring. These organisations have been able to collapse healthcare product development and delivery timelines to get everything from diagnostic test equipment to life-saving medical devices out the door in large volumes and at record speeds. They had to challenge conventional thinking and reset the dial to meet the demands of the crisis.

This will continue into 2023, where design efforts will be focused on usability. There is now greater demand for simpler, easier-to-use products, which benefit the end user with a smoother experience that’s more straightforward and less prone to error.

There is a potential issue with this dynamic, however, in the sense that companies will have to ensure that they are able to process increased product volumes in a sustainable way and avoid excess waste-to-landfill.