April 2026

I’ve had a couple of bouts of man flu over the last month or so. Maybe it’s my body finally telling me I can’t cross the pond every couple of weeks now that I’m in my 40’s? Or maybe it’s the adrenaline from the Whisper launch and the award finally wearing off. Either way, my mind is mush. 

Which is exactly the kind of moment that you need a helping hand. Some way to remember. So the new inventory control features the team has been working on are very timely. I teased this in February, but now it’s finally here.

The big change is that material management in Flows now looks forward, not just backward. It doesn’t only tell you what’s on the shelf today. It looks at the production schedule, reserves material for upcoming runs, factors in incoming lots, and shows you where shortages are likely to appear before they become somebody’s Friday afternoon problem.

That sounds obvious, I know. But it’s exactly the kind of obvious thing that is strangely hard in real manufacturing. Stock is in different places. Runs move. Powder gets reclaimed. Consumables disappear. Somebody knows what’s going on, until they’re on holiday or sick, and suddenly everyone is trying to reverse-engineer the truth from spreadsheets, memory, and slightly panicked Teams messages.

So now scheduled runs show the before-and-after impact on inventory. Completed builds automatically deduct the reserved material. Piece BOMs now show the base material used, alongside raw materials and consumables. Stock consumption reports give you a proper log of which runs consumed which materials across facilities. And order creation warns you when feedstock is looking tight.

In short: fewer surprises, less manual tracking, and much better evidence when somebody asks where the material went.

I’m increasingly convinced that this is where the unglamorous work really matters. AI gets the headlines, and I’m obviously excited about Whisper, but production still falls over when the basics aren’t right. Material, stock, traceability, timing. The team has done a lot of hard work to make those basics smarter without making them heavier. So thrilled to see this happen while I was all heads down in sickness and Whisper excitement. 

One more trip to the US coming up – in late May to DC for a NIST event if you’re around. And after that: summer. Hope your plans are shaping up nicely. 

See you soon,