I celebrated yet another birthday recently when I reached the grand old age of 56. I’d like to think that the older I get, the better I was!

The problem is that although I’ve become better at remembering things that happened a long time ago, I’m increasingly forgetting what it was I’ve just climbed to top of the stairs for. I don’t know if I’m cracking up or just losing the thread.

I blame the recent heatwave. I think I’m going to have to start writing things down before I forget them, but I can’t find my glasses and I don’t know where I left them.

In this issue, Valuechain discusses its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software specifically for additive manufacturing processes. Faced with increasingly complex products, powders, materials and manufacturing techniques, increasingly more companies are turning to what’s euphemistically being called digital thread technology to help them remember who’s done what, where and when.

In the same way that I spread my belongings around the desk, aerospace organisations are spreading their engineering design and manufacturing teams around the world, making it harder to keep tabs on the status of innumerable projects that are all supposed to run simultaneously.

They say men can’t multitask, but like ERP on a much smaller scale, some of us rely on personal digital assistants to help remember everything from anniversaries to taking the dog to the vets.

Who would have thought it, there’s still life in this 56-year old dog yet. I may be suffering from bad short-term and long-term memory – and short-term memory too, for that matter – but I’m starting out on the next year of my life. How long the ‘what, where and when’ remains on paper before it all turns digital is anyone’s guess. Now, where did I leave my smart phone?

Mike Richardson, editor