Our last blog article was from February 2020 announcing that we would be attending Southern Manufacturing again. Then silence. Like everyone else we’ve been affected by the pandemic.

The way it has affected us has been to make us exceptionally busy.

Calman Technology has customers in many different sectors and one of these is medical electronics. At the outset of the pandemic a number of our clients in that sector suddenly had a need to pull forward their product requirement. Our flexible manufacturing approach allowed us to dispatch thousands of keypads, overlays and label product weeks ahead of the planned schedule. In addition to this one of our clients in that sector invited us to contribute to one of the major ventilator projects. They did this on the basis of our performance on previous work for them.

The timeline for all the ventilator projects was extraordinary compared to more typical work and this one was no different. The part produced at Calman was almost 300 x 400mm and included over 10 colours. Even so, from initial contact on a Thursday, we had dispatched prototype parts by the following Monday. This pressure didn’t let up and we quickly found we had to introduce a second shift in the factory to cope with the volume required. Further to that we made contact with one of our competitors so that we could work together to satisfy the sudden spike in demand.

Of course, the ventilator projects stopped as quickly as they had begun as the government’s priorities shifted in dealing with the virus but other clients in the sector had more long-term positive impacts from the pandemic. During all the various stages of the shutdowns we’ve been running extra shifts or almost constant over-time.

During these busy times we’ve continued to look for opportunities to develop our facility and processes, it’s just taken longer than we would have liked due to our workload and the impact of the virus on the supply chain hence our lack of communication via the blog.

Now it’s time to get talking again. Look out for more blog articles highlighting what developments we’re undertaking and also useful details of our products and processes you can benefit from.