Y Soft Demonstrates Fast Growth; Rising Demand for 3D Printing in Australia

Y Soft, a major Czech Republic-based enterprise office solutions provider, recently revealed their rapid growth in Australia and New Zealand, due to the surging demand for professional enterprise-grade 3D printing services and products.

Founded in 2000, Y Soft operates a variety of innovation- and employee empowerment-focused programs for the development of custom-built technologies. Two main branches of Y Soft are YSoft Labs and Y Soft Ventures, with which the company experiments with various technologies and demonstrates commercial application of emerging solutions like 3D printing.

Australia and New Zealand are new markets for Y Soft, which already supports 14,000 customers in 120 countries. Immediately after the company began to experiment with 3D printing products and offer them to large enterprises, the firm started to see fast growth in its clientele and reach.

Y Soft Australia managing director Adam O’Neil noted in an interview with Business Review Australia that the company has been able to secure a series of valuable contracts with leading corporations, including Rawson Homes and Public Transports of Victoria, over the past year.

“Y Soft is looking to sustain that growth over the next 12 months by providing enterprise workflow solutions to the local market that organizations need. We are also looking at expanding our sales and consultancy team to support this business goal,” said O’Neil.

Specifically, the line of products and services Y Soft is currently working on to support its clients are 3D printing-related. Australia Business Review revealed that these products include integrated printing and scanning solutions, and 3D print management solutions for education.

One of the major products the company targets to offer is the Y Soft be3D eDee print management solution, which is applicable to a wide range of industries including education.

O’Neil stated that the Y Soft be3D eDee is the first 3D printer in the market that is built specifically for the education sector. With print management features and an accounting system embedded into the machine, the eDee 3D printer can analyze optimal 3D printing costs autonomously.

While several of the largest 3D printing companies such as Stratasys and 3D Systems have successfully distributed enterprise-grade 3D printers for manufacturers, the market still lacks saturation in 3D printers that can help industries like education that are rapidly evolving.

As technology becomes more advanced, O’Neil believes students and millennials will be able to understand and discover previously difficult concepts with enhanced visualization and imagination. 3D printing and other emerging technologies such as virtual reality can expand the capacity of students to illustrate ambiguous notions and ideas at ease.

“3D in education is a growing market with more and more educational institutions adopting fleets of 3D printers to help illustrate difficult concepts, enhance hands-on interactive learning, and drive class engagement. There is massive opportunity for Y Soft to provide educational institutions with a solution that is simple to manage and cost-effective,” O’Neil added.

A study entitled “Engagement in Australian Schools”  published by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), an organization established to assist the Australian education sector to promote and sustain excellence in teaching school leadership, laid out three factors that significantly affect the level of engagement of students.

The first factor is cognitive engagement, which the AITSL describes it as “student’s psychological investment in their own learning.” Basically, cognitive engagement entails a student’s ability to concentrate and devote strong cognitive performance to understand a certain concept.

The second factor is behavioral engagement, which essentially measures a student’s level of participation in a classroom. The AITSL states that high behavioral engagement often leads to high student performance.

The third and the last factor is emotional engagement, referring to the relationship between teachers and students. Depending on the chemistry between the teacher and the student, the intake of information can drastically alter.

According to various statistics published by the AITSL, the attendance rates and level of engagement of students have significantly decreased over the past decade. Due to the development of technologies, students expect to learn concepts and understand ideas in a more innovative and enjoyable manner. Because of the traditional teaching methods and textbook-style lesson plans, the level of engagement has continued to drop even in leading countries like Australia.

Figures from Engagement in Australian Schools study

As O’Neil explains, technologies like 3D printing can improve the level of engagement in all three categories, emotional, behavioral and cognitive engagement, as it triggers students to think in a more unorthodox and unconventional way.

When students have the opportunity to see and observe an object or a concept with a new angle, their cognitive performance increases.  As cognitive engagement levels increase, an emotional attachment to the subject and the topic forms, which also triggers an increase in the level of behavioral and emotional engagement. Discuss in the Y Soft forum at 3DPB.com.