“The two biggest challenges for manufacturing companies in the West are competition from countries with lower labour costs and a retiring workforce that isn’t being replaced. “That said, the software currently used by manufacturing companies makes automation almost impossible because data is spread across many different silos that don’t talk to each other,” he adds. “People have to enter information into multiple systems that are clunky, slow and difficult to use. Informing its development has been the fact that Byrne spent hours crunching data in client companies trying to fix problems caused by the lack of joined-up systems. “Others before us have tried to replace these legacy software companies but they’ve been replacing like-with-like.

Source: The Irish Times January 08, 2026 17:28 UTC