The thing I kept hearing at MACH

A manufacturing show tells you things a survey cannot. You hear it in the small comments people make after a demonstration. The quiet admission after they have watched a toolpath run on screen. The pause before they say, “We used to do it that way, actually.” That happened a lot at MACH.

People came to the Hexagon Production Software stand to look at software, but many of the most interesting conversations became about something wider. A programmer had left. A new machine had arrived before the team was fully ready for it. A CAM system had been installed, used for a while, then gradually stepped around because programming at the control felt more familiar when the pressure was on.

None of this was said dramatically. It was usually said in a very practical tone, because manufacturing people tend to be practical even when they are describing something quite painful.

What struck me was how often the story was not about a company needing to make a first investment. It was about a company trying to recover the value of an investment it had already made, and that feels important.

Confidence in UK manufacturing

UK manufacturing is in an interesting place. There is more confidence around than there was a year ago. The latest manufacturing PMI shows activity at its strongest level since May 2022, with output, new orders, and employment all improving. At the same time, manufacturers are still dealing with cost pressure, supply chain uncertainty, and investment decisions that have to be made carefully.

That mix was very clear at MACH. After several hesitant years, the mood felt different. People were not ignoring economic pressure, but they were no longer talking as though it explained everything. The conversations felt more entrepreneurial. Manufacturers wanted to act and move forward. They wanted to understand what would make the biggest difference now, rather than spend another year waiting for the conditions to become perfect. For software, that creates a very particular challenge.

Unlocking potential growth

When manufacturers think about growth, they often think first about another machine, another shift, or another person. Software is sometimes seen as the thing that helps the machine work, rather than one of the places where growth can be unlocked.

Yet many businesses have unused capacity already sitting inside their processes. It is in the programming time that could be reduced. The knowledge that could be captured. The repeated work that could be standardised or automated. The machine capability that could be used more fully. The avoidable checks, delays, manual edits, and nervous decisions that happen because the team does not quite trust the process when the job becomes difficult.

That is where software value becomes more interesting. It is not only about what the product can do. It is about whether the business can keep getting value from it as people, machines, customers, and production demand changes.

The conversation about ROI often starts too late. It starts when someone asks what the software costs, how quickly it will pay back, or which features make it different from another product. Those are fair questions. Manufacturers have to ask them. But they only tell part of the story. The harder question is whether the business is ready to get the value out of what it buys.

That depends on people. It depends on training. It depends on whether a workflow is understood by more than one person. It depends on whether offline programming is genuinely embedded, or whether it only works when the right person is in the building.

It also depends on how closely the software reflects the real production environment. The machine tool matters. The control matters. The digital twin matters. The way the machine has been configured, the job it is being asked to run, and the way programmers and operators actually work all matter. If those things are not properly connected, the gap is usually filled manually. At first, that can feel efficient but over time, it becomes risk. That is where a lot of value is either created or lost.

Getting back on track

One of the most memorable types of conversation at MACH was with people who were not really shopping for something new. They were trying to get back to a better way of working. They had known what good looked like. Then a person left, or a team changed, or production pressure built up, and the process slipped.

That usually happens quietly. No one decides one morning to stop using a system properly. A team gets busy. A new machine arrives, but the programming process is not adapted properly around it. Someone takes a shortcut that feels sensible at the time. A newer person learns the workaround rather than the workflow. The software remains in the business, but its role becomes smaller.

On paper, the investment is still there. In reality, some of the capability has gone.

This is one of the reasons I think we need to talk about customer support differently in manufacturing software. Support is often described as something that happens after the sale. I do not think that is how customers experience it. For them, support is part of whether the investment succeeds.

It is the person who helps a programmer understand why a process was set up in a certain way. It is the training that gives a new starter confidence without making them feel exposed. It is the application engineer who understands that a question about software is often a question about a machine, a job, a deadline, a person, and a production risk. But manufacturing knowledge is fragile when it only lives in people’s heads.

Every business has those people. The person who knows which jobs always cause trouble. The person who understands why a certain machine behaves differently. The person who can look at a part and remember the last time something similar went wrong.

Good software can help capture and structure some of that knowledge, but only when it is used consistently, implemented properly, and supported over time. If software is treated as a something that simply gets handed over, the value is always at risk.

There is also a wider point here about how manufacturers make investment decisions.

Making the right choice

The UK has had a long-running debate about automation and productivity. Recent commentary around manufacturing technology often comes back to a familiar tension: the barriers are not only technical. They are financial, cultural, and organisational. Short-term ROI expectations can make longer-term productivity investments harder to justify. That same tension exists in software.

A manufacturer may know that better programming, planning, simulation, or nesting would improve the business. They may know that it would reduce pressure on key people, make work more repeatable, or help them take on more complex jobs. Still, when costs are rising and contracts are uncertain, the safest decision can appear to be the smallest one.

That is how companies end up with tools that are good enough for now, but not strong enough for where the business is trying to go.

Free or low-cost software came up several times at MACH. Sometimes it is a sensible starting point. Sometimes it becomes the default because the stronger decision feels harder to justify. A machine tool dealer points in one direction. A subscription looks manageable, and a team needs to get moving. The choice is made. I understand why that happens, but I also think it is where software companies need to be more useful.

Manufacturers do not need vague promises about transformation. They need help thinking through the actual value case. What work are they trying to win? Where does time disappear today? Which jobs carry the most risk? What knowledge sits with one person? What happens when that person is away? Does the software still reflect the current reality/production set up? What does the new machine need from the programming process before it can earn its keep? Those are the conversations that make ROI real.

Faster, better decision-making

At MACH, the strongest conversations were rarely about technology in isolation. They were about the conditions that allow technology to work: training, implementation, team confidence, machine knowledge, supplier relationships, and the willingness to stay close to a customer after the initial excitement of a purchase has passed. That is where I think the industry needs to put more attention.

Software should make life easier for the people using it. It should help them make better decisions earlier, before material is committed and machine time is lost. It should make good practice easier to repeat. It should help newer people learn without asking experienced people to carry everything alone. It should give managers confidence that capability will not disappear every time a team changes.

It also needs to be ready for the next stage of the customer’s business.

Manufacturers cannot always know what will come next. A new machine, a different type of work, a more complex customer requirement, or a change in the team can all expose weaknesses in a process that once felt good enough. This is where experience matters. A software partner should not only help a customer make the right decision today. It should be able to stand beside them when the next decision arrives.

That is one of the deeper forms of value Hexagon brings. We see a wide range of production environments, from established machine shops to highly complex, multi-machine operations. We see where good processes hold, where they begin to drift, and what usually causes the gap between a software investment and the value a customer receives from it. Very few manufacturing challenges are completely isolated. There is usually a pattern, and experience helps you recognise it sooner. That is a very practical view of technology, but manufacturing is practical.

Real value

The lesson I took from MACH is that many manufacturers are not short of ambition. They are short of time, headroom, and sometimes confidence. They are being asked to modernise while still getting today’s work out of the door. They are trying to invest wisely while costs move around them. They are trying to hold onto knowledge in businesses where experienced people are hard to replace.

So, the real question is not simply whether software can do more. It is whether we, as software partners, are helping customers get more from it.

That means being honest about where value comes from. It comes from good implementation. It comes from training that sticks. It comes from support that understands production reality. It comes from software being used properly on an ordinary Tuesday, when the job is late, the machine is waiting, and the person who used to know the answer has moved on.

That is the moment where ROI is tested. And this is where software providers need to be close enough to make the difference… not only at the point of purchase, but through the months and years when the real value of an investment is either protected, extended or quietly lost.