Video transcript
Brian Drab: Given that industrial technology is such a broad category, my team's coverage is very wide ranging. We follow so many different industries, we've been able to see the impact of the pandemic on many different businesses and industries. And we also have spent a lot of time analyzing and thinking about the long-term impact of the pandemic, including negative repercussions and opportunities.
Companies in the rapid manufacturing industry provide services and equipment that can be used to make parts very quickly. So for example, medical device companies making COVID test kids and ventilators and face shield components used 3-D printing to make millions of parts. These rapid manufacturing services and equipment can turn around parts in a matter of hours or a day compared with traditional processes and the supply chains that are in place that often can take weeks to months to deliver parts. Also, hospitals put 3-D printers in place to make nasal swabs onsite and on demand. One of the biggest applications for 3-D printing during the pandemic was companies using 3-D printing to make fixtures and tooling that operators on the manufacturing line use to make whatever they're making on that line.
So looking beyond the pandemic, we believe that the events that companies have lived through will result in incremental demand for rapid manufacturing companies and their services and equipment. Managers will likely look to add flexibility to manufacturing operations and supplies chains. And we believe that the rapid manufacturing industry and 3-D printing companies will benefit somewhat from that new way of thinking.
Completely switching gears, we also spent a lot of time studying the home standby generator market. This is the type of generator that gets hardwired into your home's electrical box and flips on automatically in the event of a power outage. This is an industry that typically grows at a mid-single digit to high-single digit rate, but this year we expect to be up well over 20%. And the demand is being driven of course by more people working from home, children learning from home, and people just focused more than ever on the security of their homes.
Also, in warmer climates, people in the past during a power outage may have left their home and spent some time shopping or at a restaurant and in the pandemic world people are much more reluctant to leave their homes and are worried about going to public places. So that security of power at the home is just more important than ever.
So those are just a couple examples of how the pandemic has reshaped trends for industrial technology companies.