Daily Archives: June 24, 2022

PUNE, India and PISCATAWAY, N.J., June 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Crave InfoTech, an enterprise solutions and automation company, won the award for 'Best Warehouse and Automation Company' at the 55th Inflection Logistics and Warehousing Forum and Awards, in association with Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), Singapore Institute of Materials Management (SIMM), and NASSCOM Center of Excellence IoT and AI.

Crave InfoTech won the award for its work with a leading global life science/pharmaceutical client. Crave's product cWarehouse was central in its overall Intelligent Warehouse Management solution for the life science enterprise. The client used cWarehouse to digitize, streamline, and automate their warehouse and inventory management.

The client was to enable a 15% reduction in labor cost/unit handled and a 35% reduction in warehouse operation costs while becoming 100% paperless.

Shrikant Nistane, CEO, Crave InfoTech, said, "It's an honor to be felicitated by our peers for our Intelligent Supply Chain and Warehouse Management products. We have been helping our global clients along their digitization and automation journeys for the past 15 years. Our partnership with the tech leaders like SAP and Zebra Technologies ensures end-to-end supply chain visibility, interoperability, total integrability and extendibility, complete enterprise mobility backed by the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning, etc. for our clients."

"Further underlining part that perhaps clinched the award in our favor," Shrikant continued, "was the high adoption and simplified user experience for the client. We deploy our overall solution along with the intuitive workflows in quick time with zero errors and faster value-realization."

Crave InfoTech is a SAP Business Technology Partner expert with multiple satisfied clients within the life science or pharmaceutical industry. The company offers multiple intelligence-centered solutions across the supply chain, logistics, warehouse, and asset management that also include enablers like RFID/barcode scanning, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), IoT, Workflow/Process Automation, etc.

About Crave InfoTech

Crave InfoTech, based in Piscataway, New Jersey, is a fast-growing tech company with deep expertise in SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), Intelligent Enterprise, and Enterprise Mobility Enablement with quick-to-deploy Intelligent Supply Chain Management, Intelligent Asset Management, and Intelligent Warehouse Management solutions.

Media Contact:

Faiz Shaikh[emailprotected]1-844-CRAVEIT (272-8348)

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1741167/Crave_Logo.jpg

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Crave InfoTech wins 'Best Warehouse and Automation Company' at Inflection Awards USA - English - USA - English - PR Newswire

LIMERICK, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AMCS, the worlds leading technology provider for the environmental, waste, recycling, and resource management industry, today announced the AMCS Platform Summer 22 release, the second of three feature releases planned this year.

In our current inflationary times our customers require agility and automation. This release delivers much-needed visibility and control by automating key finance functions such as invoicing and price change management. Our investment in AI technology provides actionable insights, helping our customers improve the quality of their resource management to drive both efficiency and sustainability, said Elaine Treacy, Global Product Director at AMCS.

A major innovation in this release is AMCS Vision AI, a new solution utilizing the latest advances in AI technology to automatically analyze material streams to detect contamination and overfilled containers at the curbside.

The invoicing and pricing capabilities of the AMCS Platform have been enhanced to streamline processes to deliver agility, higher performance, and improved user experience.

In the Digital Engagement suite, AMCS Platform now includes mobile shopping cart experience, including multi-channel payments options. Users can easily deploy rich multimedia presentations of their service offerings and new interactive self-service options on their website. New digital payment options include Apple Pay, Google Pay and Bank Bill Presentment.

For post collection activities, AMCS releases new recycling features such as Finished Goods Inventory Tagging and LEED reporting to digitize processes. A new innovative solution is also introduced for unattended scale operations with a mobile scale (weighbridge) capability that allows authorized drivers to access unattended scale sites. This release also integrates a wider range of hardware devices to control scale access (such as barriers, traffic lights) and facilitates faster payments with point-of-sale terminal integration.

AMCS Smart Dispatch solution now has support for high density residential route progress monitoring and enhanced route optimization features to support automated churn management and order slotting. To learn more about AMCS Platform Summer 22 Release, visit amcsgroup.com

About AMCS Group

AMCS, with offices in Europe, North America and Australia is a global technology leader for the environmental, waste, recycling, and resource industries. We help over 4,000 customers reduce their operating costs, increase asset utilization, optimize margins, drive sustainability, and improve customer service. Our enterprise software and SaaS solutions deliver digital innovation to the emerging circular economy around the world.

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AMCS Unveils the AMCS Platform Summer 22 Release Introducing New AI Driven Solutions and Greater Automation - Business Wire

The harsh truth about working in Hospitality

According to a Perkbox' survey, Hospitality is the fifth most stressful industry to work in, with 64% of employees suffering from workplace anxiety. Therefore, it is not surprising that a significant number of hospitality workers are reconsidering their employment situation and evaluating different career options. And, if possible, the recent COVID pandemic made things even worse: last year's US Job Market Report demonstrated that not only "45% of hospitality workers who have remained in the industry report lower job satisfaction now than before the pandemic," but also that around 25% of the ones who quit the industry are not willing to work in it again.

Reasons are numerous: from low pay to lack of benefits, from schedule inflexibility and unpredictability of working hours to the pressure of dealing with demanding guests. We have to come to terms with it: the grass is, indeed, not as green on the hospitality side as we think it was. A recent study by DW highlighted how a good portion of workers from hotels and restaurants moved to the retail sector post-COVID, and that such workers are "difficult or impossible to win back because they have become accustomed to regular working hours and weekends off."

All the above-mentioned reasons contributed to one of the major (if not the major) problems in our industry today, one which cannot be easily solved, at least not with conventional measures: labor shortage. And if some studies suggest that Hospitality has been understaffed at least since the mid-2000s, the situation has never been more critical. It seems the only way out of this situation can be found in one of the following measures:

Create workers.In order to "create" new workers, the industry should focus on training them first. However, at least from a purely academic perspective, the situation is, at best, alarming. The majority of papers published on the subject point to the identical, dire conclusion: 1/3 of hotel management and food and beverage services students decide not to pursue a career in the industry.

Import workers.Currently, immigrants make up 22% of the hospitality workforce, so "importing" workers can be a viable solution, yet not a definitive one, especially in countries with strict immigration policies. Think of the UK, for example: due to Brexit's new visa income requirements, many EU workers have either chosen (or been forced) to leave the country. To put things into perspective, it's worth quoting a report published by The Independent, which found out that "up to 75% of London's hospitality workers (pre-Brexit) were from the EU."

Replace workers.In 2020, the number of births in Japan fell to 840,832, the lowest since 1899. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called it a "national crisis," because, if the trend does not revert, by 2050, the country will have double the number of people over 70 compared with those aged 15-30. Apart from the social and ethical implications, the shrinking working-age population also creates a highly problematic scenario in terms of labor shortage. Japan, however, is still the second-largest developed economy in the world and, interestingly, also the second most robot-intensive economy (and the first in industrial robot manufacturing).

After WWII, automation played an essential role in Japan's economic rise, and proved to be a valuable ally in dealing with the country's demographic decline. In 2015, the Japanese government approved a document called the "New Robot Strategy" to encourage the research and development of robots in pretty much any field. The document (which can be downloaded here: https://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/2015/pdf/0123_01b.pdf) is an intriguing read.

"The hotel and tourism industries are changing, both because of the post-pandemic situation and growing automation. Big brand hotels will soon be able to cope without workers by utilizing automation. And, as robot manufacturing and RPA become cheaper and cheaper over time, automation will become very affordable for all businesses, including smaller hotels." ~ Zoltan Istvn, Public Figure in Transhumanism and Republican candidate for US President 2020.

If the idea of "replacing" biological workers with artificial ones is, if not entirely accepted, at least tolerated in Asia, it is also true that we tend to have a cognitive bias towards robotics. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term "robot" as "a device that automatically performs complicated, often repetitive tasks." However, when we think about robots, we tend to rely more on pop culture. Not convinced? Close your eyes and picture the word "robot" in your mind. Done? Depending on your age, you may have seen Maria, HAL, R2-D2, Johnny 5, Optimus Prime, T-1000, Bender, or WALL-E. Did I get it right?

In Hospitality, however, the use of humanoid robots is sporadic and not (yet) particularly effective. The story of the Hen-na Hotel, in Nagasaki, is a fitting example, as the world's first robot-staffed hotel had to "fire" half of its robot workforce due to malfunction. "It's easier now," a (human) staff member stated, "that we're not being frequently called by guests to help with problems with the robots."

Robotic process automation (RPA) is way more functional in Hospitality: software (and not hardware) robots that can perform repetitive tasks otherwise done by humans. "One classic RPA use case," an interesting Red Hat blog post states, "is to automate interactions that move data between otherwise siloed applications. A bot can work within the same user interface that a human would, mimicking clicks and copy-paste actions."

Automation in the hospitality industry is inevitable. The aging population in developed economies creates disbalances in the labor market. As a result, the hospitality industry cannot remain competitive in terms of salaries and working conditions compared to other sectors. Thus, the labor supply in the hospitality labor market is decreasing. And automation comes to the rescue to reduce the hospitality labor demand. ~ Stanislav Ivanov, Director at Zangador Research Institute and Editor-in-Chief at ROBONOMICS: The Journal of the Automated Economy).

How does RPA apply to the hospitality industry? Here are some use cases we identified.

According to McKinsey, "about 60% of all occupations have at least 30% of constituent activities that could be automated." RPA, therefore, should not be seen with techno-skepticism but with straightforward, pragmatic, entrepreneurial realism.

During his 2020 Presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Andrew Yang predicted that technological advancements (especially in the field of RPA) could result in one in three American workers losing their jobs within 2032. Yang's solution to this (presumed) work crisis was what he referred to as Freedom Dividend, which is widely known as the universal basic income. Advocates of UBI's list is ever-growing, with influential names such as Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Ray Kurzweil, and Elon Musk. However, data seem to suggest that companies investing in new technologies tend to hire more people than their peers who do not, so the problem of robot-induced unemployment, at this stage, is purely speculative and not backed up by any substantial evidence. Right now, the application of RPA in Hospitality (and any other industry, for that matter) has been proven to be highly effective in managing repetitive, routine, and tedious tasks, increasing the cost-efficiency and value of your hotel.

The assumption that guests prefer the work of human hospitality workers persists in the industry. My research shows that this is often not the case. Many guests would rather not have to call the front desk in the middle of the night to ask for an extra towel. They also appreciate the greater efficiency, lower error rates, and added value of automated processes, especially if they lead to lower prices. Importantly, humans have an incredible ability to adapt to interactions with technology and frequently derive enjoyment from being exposed to novel forms of automation. ~ Ulrike Gretzel, Senior Research Fellow (University of Southern California).

The amount of manual, repetitive tasks in hotels today is crazy, says Stephen Burke, Founder of Robosize ME, a hospitality-focused RPA-as-a-managed-service-provider. So many operationally critical yet repetitive tasks exist. And those tasks require training staff when there is turnover. If all of the virtual credit cards from OTA reservations are charged by hand, for example, and the person who knows how to do it is suddenly unavailable, then either the managers need to step in, or the hotel could end up in a cash flow crisis pretty quickly. Virtual RPA robots dont take time off, and they dont need retraining. The more of these types of processes hotels automate, the more human staff can focus on the guest experience and guest retention, while simultaneously helping with pressure on staffing costs and ensuring consistency across operational processes.

At a closer look, automation allows human staff to concentrate on what's really important: managing unusual situations, offering assurance, and adding humor and compassion to the interactions with guests.

Because as American humorist Evan Esar once said: "this may be the age of automation, but love is still being made by hand."

Simone PuortoTravel Singularity

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In the age of automation, Love is still being made by hand: the role of RPA in the Hospitality industry | By Simone Puorto - Hospitality Net

"With every product release, we are serving our customer base in a deeper, more impactful way. Every new feature or enhancement is deployed because our customers provide feedback and we listen," said Ryan Sieve, chief technology officer at Accounting Seed. "The Summer '22 release reinforces our commitment to providing the most up-to-date technology and automation capabilities to our 50,000 users, and the entire Accounting Seed team is thrilled to bring it to market."

A few highlights of the Summer '22 release include:

Alongside the Summer '22 Release, Accounting Seed extends its commitment to serving the unique needs of customers through new tiered product packages. These packages are designed to more closely align Accounting Seed feature sets to the unique needs of our customers. Starting this month, three new packages will be offeredEssentials, Professional and Premier.

"We support a broad variety of customers in diverse industries and countries. The new tiered product offerings enable us to work with our customer's unique needs and better support their business processes and goals," said Sieve. "As our customers grow, we have the ability to scale with themthat is the purpose these product packages serve."

To learn more about the Summer '22 Release and new product packages, visit http://www.accountingseed.com or contact Shannon Canzanella at [emailprotected] to speak with the senior leadership team at Accounting Seed.

About Accounting SeedHeadquartered in Columbia, Md., Accounting Seed was founded in 2008 and published on the Salesforce AppExchange as a native accounting solution in 2011. The platform's innovative and flexible architecture allows customers to manage their financial data their way. Accounting Seed's secure and trusted technology enables a 360-degree view of a customer's business, putting time back in their hands and empowering financial growth. Learn more at accountingseed.com.

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Accounting Seed Advances Automation and Consolidation Capabilities in the Summer '22 Release - PR Newswire

26 organizations recognized in Nintex's global, annual customer awards program.

"Our community of customers and partners are a constant reminder of the inspiring digital transformation success that organisations are achieving," said Nintex Chief Executive Officer Eric Johnson. "We congratulate the 2022 Solution Innovation Award winners and applaud them for their success in transforming the way people work with the Nintex Process Platform."

Receiving top honours as the 2022 Nintex Champion, Quaker Houghton is a global leader in industrial process fluids and operates in more than 25 countries with 4,200 employees. Since their precise and sophisticated manufacturing processes leave no room for error, the organisation uses Nintex Forms and Nintex Workflow to automate the process of initiating lab requests and directing them appropriately.

2022 Nintex Solution Innovation Awards winners by award category are available online at https://www.nintex.com/using-nintex/customer-and-partner-awards/2022-nintex-solution-innovation-awards/ and include:

2022 Nintex Champion

Regional Transformation Leaders

Game Changing Solution-Specific Deployments

Industry Breakthroughs

Public Sector Excellence

Education & Non-Profit Success

The Nintex Solution Innovation award winners were selected by a panel of judges based on nominations submitted directly by Nintex customers and partners.

To learn how more organisations are achieving digital transformation and improving the way people work with the Nintex Process Platform, visit https://www.nintex.com/why-nintex/case-studies/.

Media ContactLaetitia SmithNintex[emailprotected]cell:+64 21 154 7114

About NintexNintex is the global standard for process intelligence and automation. Today more than 10,000 public and private sector organisations across 90 countries turn to the Nintex Process Platform to accelerate progress on their digital transformation journeys by quickly and easily managing, automating and optimising business processes. Learn more by visiting http://www.nintex.com and experience how Nintex and its global partner network are shaping the future of Intelligent Process Automation (IPA).

Product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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Process Intelligence and Automation Success Honoured with 2022 Nintex Solution Innovation Awards - PR Newswire

Automation and robotics are becoming increasingly important for plastics processors. Faced with labor shortages, manufacturerscan gain a crucial productivity margin from automating certain processes. Robotic automation can also help to make the workplace more people-friendly and attractive to the existing and potential workforce.

Indeed, studies show companies that adopt robotics grow faster than those that don't. Unfortunately, many businesses are in a position to benefit from robotics but are unaware of where to start.

Larger plastics processing companies have used robotics for many years, especially for machine tending. The larger companies had higher production volumes, making the ROI attractive. Smaller processing operations, on the other hand, have been slower to adopt robotics because their lower volumes and higher variability in job characteristicshave presented a challenge to the technology.

Today, however, the prices of many kinds of robotic solutions havedecreased significantly. Automation is more accessible than ever, regardless of the size of the operation, and the number and ways robotics can be applied have expanded.

That said, there remain many areas still ripe for automating. Identifying the best opportunities for robotic automation at the outset is crucial to maximizing your return on investment.

Many manufacturers struggle with where exactly to begin automating. It can be a daunting task, determining where to begin. It starts with understanding your needs. What is your current productivity? How many person-hours are needed to complete the relevant tasks that make up your manufacturing process?

Identifying the best opportunities for robotic automation at the outset is crucial to maximizing your return on investment.

The best place to start is to take a top-down approach to mapping out your factory, looking for those areas that could benefit the most from automation and where the most significant risks lie.

With these ideas in mind, weve compiled seven processes often overlooked by plastics manufacturers that are ripe for automation.

1. Raw Material IntakeFor processors who dont buy railcar quantities, resins and additives typically arrive in sacks of varying sizes stacked on pallets. Workers must unload the truck at the dock and convey the pallets to a staging area. Currently, automating the truck-unloading process may be more difficult for robotics, although some excellent systems are on the market. The ideal candidate for automated truck unloading is in a setting with a low variability in the pallet size, shape, and weight. Special considerations apply to the trucks and the docks for this automation to succeed.

Most processors still rely heavily on operators to move materials around their plant. (Photos: Gain & Co.)

On the other hand, emptying raw-material sacks into a centralized feed system is a task well suited for a robot. Most operations today do this kind of task manually. The worker cuts open the sack, hoists it into a bin, and empties the pellets from the bag into the feed system. The hoisting process may require a gantry or crane if the sacks are larger and heavier.

In emptying the sack, dust is generated that can be problematic for the workers, and injuries from utility blades are sadly relatively common.

Robotics can readily automate the jobs of opening the sacks and emptying them into the appropriate receptacles. Automation reduces labor requirements and protects people from unwanted exposure to dust and particles.

2. Machine TendingMachine tending is not an overlooked taskindeed, it is probably the most common application for robotics by processors. However, smaller operations may have felt the investment was too significant, the variety of products to be handled was too great, and the complexity of the robot programming too high to be a good match for their organization.

Advancing technology has removed those barriers. The cost of robotics has been reduced dramatically over the last decade. The level of artificial intelligence (AI) has improved significantly, allowing a robot manipulator to handle much more variation than ever before. Also, programming the newer category ofcollaborative robots, or cobots,can be as easy as grabbing hold of the robot arm and moving it into position. By manually placing a robot arm ina sequences of poses, the robot can be taught the motions to make. No programming is required.

Robots have been deployed for years to remove parts from presses. But falling prices and easier programming make this an option that now even smaller molders canconsider.

Thus, machine tending is a form of automation that even small operations can adopt, thanks to falling costs.The most common robot used for machine tending in injection molding applications is the XYZ or Cartesian type. Because such a robot is relatively simple, it is less expensive. If the application requires, an articulated robot arm can perform more complex movements.

3. Deburring and Excess Material RemovalAfter a plastic part has been removed from a mold, excess material will frequently need to be removed. A rotating saw blade, snipperor grinder/sander are often used for deflashing and deburring.

These are repetitive processes that lend themselves well to automation by robotics. The same robot arm that removes parts from the mold can also perform deflashing and deburring in many applications. Alternatively, one robot can be used for machine tending and part removal, and a different robot can be utilized to do the deburring.

One step that is still manualand perhaps ripe for automationis deburring/deflashing.

4. AssemblyMolders may include assembly operations to add value to the part. Assembly processes can enhance the value of your company's services and increase profitability. The assembly task may involve joining plastic parts togetheror addingmetal, rubberor other componentsto the plastic part to make a larger assembly. Assembly operations are readily automated with robotics. Delta-type robots can be used for rapid pick-and-place, and SCARA robots are often used for small-parts assembly.

5. InspectionComputer vision technology and AI have made rapid advances in recent years. As a result, visual inspections that were once exclusively the domain of manual processes can now be automated.A typical application is to verify that excess material has been sufficiently or properly removed. Blow molding, for instance, isripe for automated inspection. Computer vision can handle such inspection with high accuracy and repeatability.

Manual vision inspection, in contrast, is much less accurate. In his Quality Handbook, Joseph Juran, a pioneer in quality assurance, argues that 100% manual visual inspection can be expected to be no more than 87% accurate. Conversely, the accuracy of a properly installed computer-vision inspection system can approach 100%. Computer-vision systems never grow tired or become distracted, both significant factors limiting the accuracy of manual visual inspection.

Computer-vision inspection can also measure dimensions and compare shapes (such as concentricity or ovality) to a predefined standard. Because a camera can take 100 frames or more per second, a robotic system can automatically detect and remove defects at rates that humans cannot match. No human would be reasonably expected to reliably spot defects in a rapidly moving conveyor system. Yet computer-vision inspection can do this quite readily. Examples relevant to processors include detecting cracks and verifying that labels or codes are properly applied.

Computer-vision systems never grow tired or become distracted, both significant factors limiting the accuracy of manual visual inspection.

We have seen cases where there is a reluctance to use computer-vision inspection. For example, sometimesthe specifications call for manual visual inspection in surgical or medical applications. Therefore, the manufacturer is reluctant to propose something different. Given the greater accuracy and reliability of computer-vision inspection, it is only a matter of time before such obstacles fade away.

6. Packaging & PalletizingAfter removal from the machine,secondary operations and inspection,parts need to be placed into primary packaging, and robotics is an excellent solution. When using robotics for thistask, speed, repeatabilityand accuracy are all superior to manual processes. In addition to placing parts into packages, the packaging itself can be formed by automated systems.

Placing primary packaging into secondary packages for shipping is also a prime candidate for robots. Once the parts have been properly placed into the secondary packaging, these units can be assembled robotically into pallets for placing onto trucks.

7. Internal LogisticsAnother area ripe for automation is the transportation of packages and pallets within a facility. Plastic parts manufacturers can use Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) for such transport.

Automatic guided vehiclescan move goods from a primary packaging to a secondary packaging station. On the intake side, such self-driving vehicles can transport incoming pallets to a decanting station.

One typical workflow that AGVs and AMRs can help with is transporting pallets of goods from a palletizing station to the shipping dock. If appropriate, the autonomous robots can move goods from a primary packaging to a secondary packaging station. On the intake side, such self-driving vehicles can transport incoming pallets to a decanting station.

While not every process is appropriate for automation, the rapid advancementof robotics is allowing a much wider array of businesses access to this technology. Plastics processors are poised to reap the benefits of the future of robotics, and thankfully its no longer just large corporations able to take advantage. Small and medium-sized businesses are now able to leverage the increased productivity, heightened safetyand insulation against labor shortagesthat can be derived fromautomation.

ABOUTTHEAUTHOR: Niels Korsageris a senior production and automation advisor at Gain & Coand sister company HowToRobot, both Danish-based independent consultancies on robotics and automation. Korsager previously was Assistant Professor in Supply Chain Manufacturing & Robots at the University of Southern Denmark Since 2017, Gain & Co has been helping companies figure out their robot potential, analyze their business cases and find the right suppliers for their needs. HowToRobot is a matchmaking platform that connects buyers of robotics to the worlds largest network of suppliers. Contact: info@gainco.dk; howtorobot.com.

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Seven Automation Opportunities You May Have Overlooked - Plastics Technology