Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1236528
100 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2020 Oren Manor, director of business develop- ment at Mentor, a Siemens Business, shares an update with Barry Matties on the recent CO- VID-19 outbreak. Manor describes how Men- tor's automation business operations have ad- justed, including: • All online automation training for customers is free-of-charge for the next 30 days • Additional virtual support options • More collaboration tools available to interact and troubleshoot customer installations • Plans to accelerate cloud infrastructures Manor also provides some projections on how manufacturing may need to adjust as the global economies come out of this time. Manor is the author of The Printed Circuit Assembler's Guide to… Advanced Manufac- turing in the Digital Age. Visit I-007eBooks. com to download this book and other free, educational titles. Barry Matties: Welcome. Today, I'm speaking with Oren Manor. He's the director of business development for Mentor Siemens business. Oren, why don't you start by telling us how this virus outbreak has changed your business. Oren Manor: Sure. Thank you for having me. Obviously, this is having a significant impact on the Mentor and Siemens business. This, of course, will probably have an effect for many years to come. We are probably only at the be- ginning of this change, and this will create a revolution in a lot of different aspects of our life, and one of them is also how people deploy software around factories and how they de- sign them and implement them. We can't just change all the business models in one day, so that does have a limit. But what we have done, first of all, is to offer all of our online training free of charge. We understand that we cannot go on-site to train customers. And since we are, we work physically with our manufacturers, and we typically do a lot of training face to face and on-site. And peo- ple like that, the training comes in five days, he builds the relationship. Of course, this is com- pletely impossible now. And that's why we've really taken a lot of our online training, which we sell as a subscription and we're giving it at the moment 30 days free of charge for all of our customers. If they have any questions, they can get it there. If they were planning training, they could get it there. And also if the capacity has gone down a little bit and maybe they're breath- ing now and to have some spare time they can Mentor's Oren Manor on Automation Business Adjustments Interview by Barry Matties I-CONNECT007 Oren Manor