Category Archives: Automation

BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The buyer consortium (the Consortium) consisting of Mr. Shao Baiqing, Ace Lead Profits Limited, and CPE Funds Management Limited today issued a letter to shareholders of Hollysys Automation Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: HOLI) (the Company or Hollysys) with additional information regarding the Consortiums proposed acquisition of the Company and the consent solicitation. The Consortium strongly believes that the proposed acquisition is the best and only option to shareholders to achieve immediate liquidity on their investment, at a highly attractive premium and with far greater certainty. The Consortium reminds shareholders of the Company as of June 24, 2021 to sign, date and return the WHITE consent card as soon as possible before July 22, 2021.

The full text of the Consortiums letter is as follows:

Dear Fellow Shareholders,

We, the buyer consortium (the Consortium or we) consisting of Mr. Shao Baiqing (Mr. Shao), Ace Lead Profits Limited (Ace Lead), and CPE Funds Management Limited (CPE) would like to remind you to please submit your consent to our resolutions concerning the proposed acquisition (the Proposed Acquisition) of all outstanding ordinary shares of the Company not already owned by the Consortium at a price of $17.10 per share in cash, by following the instructions on the WHITE consent card.

If you hold shares through a bank or broker (i.e., in street-name or as a beneficial owner) and have not yet received the Consortiums consent materials by mail or email, please contact your bank or broker as soon as possible and request instructions regarding the WHITE consent card. If you are a record holder (i.e., you hold shares in your own name on the register of members of the Company), please promptly contact Innisfree M&A Incorporated (Innisfree), the firm assisting the Consortium with the consent solicitation, at the telephone number or email address below to request a copy of the WHITE consent card.

Additionally, in case it is helpful, we would like to share with all shareholders the information we have provided in response to certain limited inquiries we have received:

Q.

Will the results of the consent solicitation commit shareholders to the Proposed Acquisition?

No. We would like to reiterate that the consent is non-binding as to the Proposed Transaction generally and the $17.10 per share offer price specifically. As noted in our June 29, 2021 press release (italic and bold font added for emphasis purposes): This solicitation, if successful, will facilitate the Consortiums efforts to proceed with the Proposed Acquisition despite the inaction of the board of directors of the Company (the Board). If shareholders holding more than 50% of the outstanding shares of the Company deliver their consents to the resolutions as provided in the consent card, such resolutions will become effective pursuant to the Companys articles of association and the BVI Business Companies Act 2004. The intention of these resolutions is, among others, to limit the Boards power to invoke and exercise rights pursuant to the Companys existing poison pill in respect of the Proposed Acquisition. These approved resolutions, even after becoming effective, do not constitute an approval and authorization of the Proposed Acquisition by shareholders. Shareholders of the Company will be entitled to consider and vote upon the Proposed Acquisition at a special shareholder meeting to be called by the Board following the execution of a definitive merger agreement between the Consortium and the Company in respect of the Proposed Acquisition. Shareholders may find the full text of our June 29, 2021 press release, as well as other information about our consent solicitation and the Proposed Acquisition, on the dedicated website at Hollysyspublicsolicitation.net.

Q.

Does the Consortium expect to conduct due diligence with respect to the value of its offer?

Regarding the potential for due diligence and whether the Consortium would reconsider the offer price, we continue to believe that the Company will not allow us to conduct any meaningful due diligence in a timely or effective manner. However, if the Company were to present new, concrete and material information relevant to the offer, of course the Consortium would keep an open mind.

Q.

Does the Consortium have financing in place for its Proposed Acquisition?

While there have been many banks offering the Consortium very beneficial terms, we believe it is premature for us to obtain committed financing at this stage given the non-binding nature of the consent solicitation process and the uncertainty around it. We would expect to undertake this phase of the process once it is clear that the Company will negotiate with us in good faith a definitive merger agreement in respect of the Proposed Acquisition that can be put before shareholders. Then, again, the Companys board of directors and the Consortium would first need to execute a merger agreement and shareholders would need to approve it before we could close on the Proposed Acquisition.

Q.

Who is ACE Lead, and is there a dispute about who owns its interest in Hollysys?

Ace Lead is a holding company wholly owned and controlled by Mr. Shao. Mr. Shao is its sole shareholder and director. Certain former and current employees of the Company and its subsidiaries (and related parties of such employees) have economic interests in a portion of the Company shares held by Ace Lead, which allows those individuals to share the economic benefits of those shares (such as rights to receive dividends and proceeds from the sale of shares). But employees and their related parties have no rights or interests in the underlying Company shares and they cannot sell, transfer or vote those Company shares either.

As a matter of record and common ground, there is no dispute that Ace Lead owns 4,144,223 ordinary shares of Hollysys in its own right. The alleged dispute is regarding who should own and control Ace Lead. Mr. Changli Wang asked Mr. Shao to transfer the ownership and control of Ace Lead to himself or his designees, which has no legal or factual basis whatsoever.

Q.

Who is CPE, and what is their experience with U.S. public companies?

CPE is a leading asset manager, currently managing a number of private equity, mezzanine and public market funds. Founded in 2008 by a world class team of investment professionals and supported by over 200 domestic and international investors, CPE is one of the largest private equity firms in China with a total AUM exceeding US$20 billion. Since its inception, the team has made over 200 private equity investments, among which over 50 are buyout transactions. CPE places great emphasis on value creation post investment and employs a dedicated in-house portfolio management team and operating partners who work alongside deal teams to drive strategic, organizational and operational enhancement in portfolio companies. It has received recognition from various international professional awards, the most well-known being the PEI 300 (Year 2021), which ranked CPE as one of the top 60 largest private equity firms worldwide, top 5 in Asia, and No. 2 in China, as well as the Private Equity Exchange & Awards, which honored CPE the winner of both the Best Global Private Equity Fund Silver Award and the Best ESG Private Equity Initiatives Silver Award in 2021. More information about CPE can be found at its official website: http://www.cpe-fund.com/en/index.html.

Shareholders with questions about how to submit consents and related matters should promptly contact Innisfree by email at HOLIconsent@innisfreema.com or by phone at +1 (877) 750-9501 (toll-free from the U.S. and Canada), or at +1 (412) 232-3651 (from other locations), during the hours of 10:00 a.m-7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday-Friday, and 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturdays. We ask you to please return your signed WHITE consent card to us as soon as possible before July 22, 2021.

Thank you for your support and prompt action!

Your sincerely,

Shao BaiqingAce Lead Profits LimitedCPE Funds Management Limited

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Buyer Consortium Updates Shareholders of Hollysys Automation Technologies With Additional Information Relating to Consent Solicitation - Business Wire

MILWAUKEE, July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the world's largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, has been named a finalist of the 2021 Microsoft Internet of Things Partner of the Year Award. The company was recognized among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

"We're honored to receive this recognition from Microsoft," said Rockwell Automation Chairman and CEO Blake Moret. "Achieving results is what Rockwell is all about, and teaming with Microsoft helps us to deliver on that promise. Our intelligent industrial systems enable our customers to seamlessly save on infrastructure costs, speed time-to-value, and increase productivity."

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered outstanding Microsoft-based solutions during the past year. Awards were classified in various categories, with honorees chosen from a set of more than 4,400 submitted nominations from more than 100 countries worldwide. Rockwell Automation was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services for IoT.

The Internet of Things Partner of the Year Award recognizes a Microsoft partner that has designed, developed and deployed IoT solutions built on its intelligent cloud and edge innovations, such as Azure, IoT and edge devices with their customers. These solutions are helping companies quickly improve their business by increasing visibility into their digital assets, such as where they are at a given time or predicting maintenance required to ensure zero downtime. As a result, they can drive business results and grow customer value.

"I am honored to announce the winners and finalists of the 2021 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards," said Rodney Clark, corporate vice president, Global Partner Solutions, Channel Sales and Channel Chief, Microsoft. "These remarkable partners have displayed a deep commitment to building world-class solutions for customers from cloud-to-edge and represent some of the best and brightest our ecosystem has to offer."

The Microsoft press release with more information about the awards and a full list of winners and finalists can be found at: https://news.microsoft.com/2021/07/08/microsoft-announces-2021-partner-of-the-year-awards-winners-and-finalists/

About Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE: ROK), is a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation. We connect the imaginations of people with the potential of technology to expand what is humanly possible, making the world more productive and more sustainable. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Rockwell Automation employs approximately 24,000 problem solvers dedicated to our customers in more than 100 countries. To learn more about how we are bringing the Connected Enterprise to life across industrial enterprises, visit http://www.rockwellautomation.com

SOURCE Rockwell Automation

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Rockwell Automation recognized as a finalist for the 2021 Microsoft Internet of Things Partner of the Year - PRNewswire

India is among the countries most vulnerable to technological disruption in the Asia-Pacific and least prepared for automation, according to a research study released by Deloitte that was commissioned by Autodesk Foundation.

The study, The Future of Work is Now: Is APAC Ready?, explores the state of automation and the future of work across 12 APAC countries Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The report aims to help identify the labour markets most vulnerable to technological disruption in the region.

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It found India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan most at risk and least prepared for the coming wave of automation.

India ranks the fifth highest in terms of the impact from automation and ninth in the level of preparedness for this impact. It faces a greater impact from automation due to the higher share of employment in agriculture, manufacturing and construction, all of which have been identified as high-risk industries.

According to the report, Indias construction sector is the fifth most vulnerable, ahead of those in Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Philippines.

The construction industry is likely to be among the hardest hit by automation across APAC due to the high proportion of routine and manual tasks and low year-on-year global productivity growth.

In the case of agriculture, India, the Philippines and Indonesia have a higher likelihood of automation, while Pakistan faced the highest risk of impact from automation.

Increased demand for food and sustainable farming methods is expected to lead to higher adoption of automation and digital solutions, the report said.

Technologies such as artificial intelligence can also help reduce spoilage, increase productivity, and add $9 billion to farmer incomes, it further said.

Indias mining sector has the second-highest risk of impact from automation, after Bangladeshs.

The sectors vulnerability to automation is traced to its relatively low skill requirements, its high degree of routine and manual tasks, and use of direct physical activity to operate machinery.

Mining comprises less than one per cent of the workforce in 10 out of the 12 countries analysed, suggesting that automation in mining is well underway.

Adoption of automation has gained significant momentum amid the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the report, close to half of all businesses intend to increase their adoption of robotic process automation over the next year.

Automation creates opportunities for new, more meaningful types of work as it replaces mundane or repetitive manual tasks, but the state of preparedness of countries and industries will determine whether they benefit from these advances. Improving digital literacy, supporting disadvantaged workers, and putting in place the right infrastructure and skills will help create new roles that workers can transition into, said Rajeev Mittal, Regional Director, India and SAARC, Autodesk.

The pandemic has accelerated demand for automation across sectors, which will greatly transform how companies in India do business, Mittal added.

The report also proposed solutions to help the workforce thrive as automation gains further momentum. This includes raising awareness of the need to adapt, funding industry-specific programmes for digital transformation, and investing in learning programmes to help disadvantaged workers and build resilience.

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India is among the least prepared countries for automation in Asia-Pacific: Report - BusinessLine

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ACCELQ is delighted to announce the launch of Q-Community this summer. Q-Community aims to build and serve a community of Test Automation enthusiasts with a primary objective to find and nurture ways to transform test automation to be simpler, more reliable, and sustainable for the real world. It will help foster, guide, and upskill testers to stay relevant for the future of technological innovation.

Our vision is to drive community initiatives to make Automation easily accessible and eliminate traditional skill-based silos. The launch of community comes at a great time as we are going through rapid expansion in our global customer footprint and continue technology leadership and innovation in Quality Engineering with ACCELQ 5.0 platform release, said Mahendra Alladi, CEO & Founder, ACCELQ.

ACCELQ recently onboarded Geosley Andrades as Director of Community Programs to drive the Q-Community initiative globally. The power of community and the sense of belonging it creates is what drives Geosley day-in, day-out. With over a decade of Software testing and automation experience, Geosley brings a mix of a practitioner and a great understanding of community to the table. Being passionate about continuous learning, he loves to help and connect with people to solve real-life testing challenges.

We are thrilled to have Geosley join us on this exciting journey at ACCELQ. Geosleys background in Test Automation blended with his passion for social initiatives fits perfectly with ACCELQs Community vision, says Guljeet Nagpal, Chief Product Officer, ACCELQ

Geosley added, I am excited to join the ACCELQ family. Having worked with many test automation tools during my career, I believe ACCELQ brings the discipline, flexibility, and power of test automation into the No-code World. Looking forward to spreading the good news about Test Automation alongside a passionate and dynamic leadership team and taking ACCELQ to greater heights of success with Q-Community.

About ACCELQ

ACCELQ is an AI-powered Codeless Test Automation platform on the cloud that seamlessly automates Web UI, API, Mobile, and Desktop. ACCELQ was analyzed as a leader in the latest Continuous Test Automation platform Forrester research. ACCELQs customers are Fortune 500 enterprises across industry verticals globally, and they have adopted ACCELQ to accelerate their automation objectives significantly.

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ACCELQ Announces the Launch of Q-Community - A Global Community of Test Automation Enthusiasts - Business Wire

The pandemic has forced the industry to hasten its embrace of automation. By the start of this year, over 40% of life insurers had either already incorporated some degree of accelerated and automated underwriting into their new business process, or had imminent plans to do so. This was a dramatic increase from 18% the year before according to research from Celent.

Pandemic or not, this pivot was always inevitable, and the numbers underline why. According to Celent, over half of insurers that have already adopted accelerated underwriting report payback periods of less than a year, with another quarter either reporting or expecting payback in just two to three years. Decisions that would once take 20 to 30 days are made in 3, and the huge reduction in the costs of policy-issuance means that these systems rapidly pay for themselves.

Nonetheless, the initial wave were currently seeing only scratches the surface of the technologys revolutionary potential.

Simple vs Deep automationMuch of the concrete activity and investment to date has, understandably, focused on the simplest and most straightforward of life insurance applications. For example, applications from younger, healthy customers with no underlying health conditions, where risk is low and policy issuance is straightforward. The accelerated decisions being made by the software here typically amount to unambiguous if X then always Y logic. These are decisions that never truly needed to be seen individually at least by human underwriters in the first place.

This simple layer was always going to be the first port of call for automation as insurers started to dip their toes into new systems and ways of working. We all know that digital automation is great at replacing humans when it comes to the easier, more repetitive tasks.

But this layer is also inherently limited. By definition, this layer can only ever encompass the most risk-free minority of applications. And, ironically enough, the rush for more and more third-party data to feed these systems can actually push the automatic approval percentage down over time. Where the aim is to avoid any need for human involvement from start to finish, for cases with minimal risk, more data can end up meaning more automatic rejections.

One silver lining of the last year, however, is that the need to learn more rapidly has shown insurers the extent to which they can also use data to accelerate decisions in the far more nuanced and complex cases, which would not have been natural candidates for an automated approach before the pandemic.

This is referred to as deep automation, where the aim is not to remove the human element entirely, but to create a more collaborative fusion of man and machine, automating as much as possible while ensuring that human underwriting expertise is focused where it is most needed, as efficiently as possible. By making smarter use of data, and treating accelerated underwriting systems as a tool for human underwriters, rather than a replacement, insurers can reap huge benefits in both time and cost across the majority of the applications they underwrite as opposed to just with one specialty layer.

This is the thinking behind the current industry interest in predictive models and rules-based processing. These systems are able to deal with far more complex chains of if, then logic, drawing on a wide variety of third-party data in sophisticated ways to make much more nuanced judgments about risk without having to involve human underwriters in every individual decision. The human element is still very much there, but the skills and time of expert underwriters are put to better use on perfecting and tweaking the models themselves, as well as dealing with the most difficult and complex of applications that arise.

While its early days, and these models are still being developed and improved, the untapped potential is there for the taking with current technology. At the moment Celent estimates that around 10 to 20% of issuances across the industry involve some form of automated underwriting. With properly integrated systems using deep automation, theres no reason why this number cant be closer to 70%. And thats as things stand today, before models and techniques inevitably improve in the imminent future.

Of course, the potential is about more than just industry opportunity. For customers accessing policies that make use of accelerated underwriting, the result is a far more user-friendly experience in terms of speed and convenience. Extending these benefits to more complex cases could herald a new era of convenience and accessibility in life insurance, not just for those in the lowest risk groups, but right across society including millions with complex, underlying or changeable health conditions.

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Unleashing the true potential of automated underwriting - Digital Insurance

Tampa, FL, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a post-COVID world, businesses have been forced to re-evaluate how they operate. From paying bills to processing sales orders and managing the ever-increasing inflow of documents, enterprise companies are looking for efficient and cost-effective ways to get a handle on their daily workload.

The goal: simplify and automate business processes, comply with industry regulations and business rules, and streamline error-prone processes while reducing costs. With Enterprise Content Management (ECM), reaching new levels of productivity, whether remote or in-office, is simple.

For Infor (BPCS/LX, MAPICS/XA, LN, PRMS) customers with complex business processes, that means implementing a solution that fits the way you work, and not the other way around. In this session, you will explore IntelliChiefs proven playbook for streamlining operations and improving management visibility into performance. This session will help you understand savings gained from digital transformation that combines people, processes, and technology.

Register: https://www2.intellichief.com/Infor07212021

Our playbook will help you gain a better understanding of the end-to-end use cases for business process automation in various areas of your organization, including of Accounts Payable, Sales Order Processing, Fulfillment, Accounts Receivable and Human Resources, among others.

Understand how you can streamline processes for AP Automation with:

See how Infor sales order automation can reduce the time to process an order and manual entry errors:

You will also learn how ECM improves audit compliance for any business process and reduces costs associated with paper handling, including retrieval time from filing cabinets, copying documents, finding lost/misplaced documents, and maintaining physical paper storage cabinets

Join us for Process Automation Playbook: Infor Accounts Payable, Sales Orders, and Beyond to see first-hand how IntelliChiefs ECM solution can be leveraged across your organization to simplify and improve how you do business.

Register: https://www2.intellichief.com/Infor07212021

About IntelliChief

IntelliChiefis the emerging leader in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Accounts Payable Automation, and Sales Order Automation. Leveraging advanced OCR, powerful workflows, document management, and analytics, IntelliChief eliminates manual processes and automates repetitive, time-consuming tasks to help businesses secure a decisive competitive advantage.

As a trusted Infor Solution Partner, IntelliChief is recognized for its robust, configurable solutions and secure integrations with ERP systems and applications. Hundreds of customers in every industry depend on IntelliChief as a strategic partner to help them digitize documents, standardize business processes, and automate Accounts Payable, Sales Orders, Human Resources, and more.

The IntelliChief team is committed to serving our customers, community, and country by guiding them throughDigital Transformationand exemplifying what is possible with an ardent dedication to innovation and progress.

Connect with IntelliChief:

IntelliChief Resource Library|Blog|LinkedIn|Twitter

For more information, visithttps://www.intellichief.com/.

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People. Processes. Technology. Together. Explore IntelliChief's Proven Playbook for Automating Accounts Payable and Order Processing With -...

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds' and successful investors' positions as of the end of the fourth quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund's trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 6 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) based on that data.

Is ROK a good stock to buy? Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) has seen a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money in recent months. Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) was in 26 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 50. Our calculations also showed that ROK isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds' small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We have been able to outperform the passive index funds by tracking the moves of corporate insiders and hedge funds, and we believe small investors can benefit a lot from reading hedge fund investor letters and 13F filings.

Gavin Saitowitz of Prelude Capital

Gavin Saitowitz of Prelude Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, economists warn of inflation flare up. So, we are checking out this backdoor gold play that has hit peak gains of 718% in a little over a year. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Keeping this in mind we're going to view the new hedge fund action surrounding Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK).

Story continues

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 26 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -26% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ROK over the last 23 quarters. With hedge funds' capital changing hands, there exists an "upper tier" of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) was held by Impax Asset Management, which reported holding $167.2 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by AQR Capital Management with a $51.4 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included PEAK6 Capital Management, GAMCO Investors, and Markel Gayner Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Heathbridge Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK), around 4.03% of its 13F portfolio. Jade Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.7 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ROK.

Due to the fact that Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) has witnessed falling interest from the smart money, it's easy to see that there exists a select few hedge funds that elected to cut their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, Seth Rosen's Nitorum Capital dumped the largest position of the "upper crust" of funds tracked by Insider Monkey, worth about $54.8 million in stock, and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell's Arrowstreet Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $38.5 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 9 funds last quarter.

Let's now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK). These stocks are Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL), Nutrien Ltd. (NYSE:NTR), Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX), Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR), Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated (NYSE:PEG), Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (NYSE:CHT), and SBA Communications Corporation (NASDAQ:SBAC). This group of stocks' market caps resemble ROK's market cap.

[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position DAL,50,1099712,-8 NTR,33,895159,8 XLNX,57,3581332,-9 IBKR,31,1456604,3 PEG,24,287434,-4 CHT,3,153173,-2 SBAC,38,2090468,-5 Average,33.7,1366269,-2.4 [/table]

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 33.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1366 million. That figure was $442 million in ROK's case. Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (NYSE:CHT) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ROK is 32.9. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly negative signal and we'd rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 24% in 2021 through July 9th and surpassed the market again by 6.7 percentage points. Unfortunately ROK wasn't nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); ROK investors were disappointed as the stock returned 10.1% since the end of March (through 7/9) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

Get real-time email alerts: Follow Rockwell Automation Inc (NYSE:ROK)

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.

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Is Rockwell Automation Inc. (ROK) A Good Stock To Buy? - Yahoo Finance

Four years ago in Mountain View, California, a team of robots was cranking out pizzas on a production line that was almost fully automated. The first robot pressed a ball of dough into a flat circle, a second squirted tomato sauce onto it, and a third spread the sauce over the whole crust. Then a human stepped in to add the toppings, but a fourth robot put the pizzas in the oven and a fifth sliced them up when they were done.

That operation, called Zume Pizza, has since discontinued its pizza-making operations and shifted its focus to systems for food packaging, production, and delivery. But the idea of robots taking over repetitive food preparation work has only gained traction, especially in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. A restaurant in Paris has taken Zumes idea to a whole new level of automation, with robots in charge from start to finish.

At Pazzi Pizzeriaor, as the owners are calling it, Pazziriacustomers place their orders on screens at self-service terminals, then they can watch a team of robots working in concert to deliver up their pizza. In fact, the spectacle seems as important as the food; a sign outside the restaurant encourages passerby to Come for the show, stay for the pizza.

The show starts with a robot grabbing a handful of dough and depositing it on a pan, where another bot flattens it, a third applies tomato sauce, etc. From dough-grabbing to inserting in the oven, preparing a pizza takes just 45 seconds. The oven can bake 6 pizzas at a time, yielding about 80 pizzas per hour. Once a pizza is baked to gooey perfection, a robot slices it and places it in a box, and its then transferred (by a robot, of course) to a numbered cubby from which the customer can retrieve it.

Its a shame the pizzeria didnt open during the height of the pandemic, as its revenues likely would have gone through the roof given that theres zero person-to-person contact required for you to get a fresh, custom-made pizza in your hands (and more importantly, your belly!).

Pazzis creators spent eight years researching and developing the pizza bots, and they say the hardest part was getting the bots to work effectively with the raw dough. Since its made with yeast, the dough is sensitive to changes in temperature, humidity, and other factors, and for optimal results it needs to be rolled out and baked with very precise timing.

Its a very fast process, the timing is perfectly controlled, and quality is assured because the robots are consistent, said Pazzi co-founder Sebastien Roverso. He added that engineers monitor the bots remotely, and if needed they can take control of them and fix any issues.

Despite the savings on employee training and labor that the robots bring to Pazzi, its prices are about on par with what youd expect from a traditional counter-service fast casual restaurant, ranging from 7 to 14 euros for a pizza that feeds 1 to 2 people.

Pazzis Paris restaurant opened last week, and the company plans to expand internationally, starting with Switzerland next year. As the companys website explains, Pazzi isnt just a rearrangement of the word pizza; its also the plural of the Italian noun pazzo, which translates as crazy, and can be used to refer to people supporting or building an audacious project.

Pazziria may have seemed a bit crazy when the idea was first conceived of years ago, but now its seeming downright logical. Restaurants are experiencing a massive staffing shortage post-pandemic, with many of the workers who were laid off, quit, or were furloughed showing little interest in returning to their jobs, often because theyve moved to new geographic locations.

Thus, just as the pandemic accelerated other tech trendsincluding automation, e-commerce, and remote workit seems likely to give robotic food service a forward push. Whether this will fill much-needed gaps in the labor market or end up displacing workers who need jobs remains to be seen, but my guess is that Pazzi will soon have plenty of competition for robot-run restaurants. The biggest outstanding question is, hows the pizza?

Image Credit: Pazzi

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Watch Robots Make Pizzas From Start to Finish at an Automated Pizzeria - Singularity Hub

A Brief History of Automation in Architecture

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Efficiency in theconstructionsite by reducing waste and lowering costs,improving safety through better planning, and introducing machines to assist in the construction and design process. These benefits can be achieved through automation in architecture, but for technology to reach this point of empowering and supporting creativity while also improving efficiency, we have come a long way.To understand how automation developed and the prospects it offers for architecture, here is a brief timeline.

The history of building automation started back in 1883 when Warren Johnson invented the thermostat. Thiscomponentis used to sense and regulate the temperatureof a physical system, and back then, itwas a simple device that responded to falling temperature by activating a light in the boiler room, indicating when janitors should shovel more coal into the furnace to maintainheat in the building.

Mechanization in architecture, however, was introduced through the Modern Movement. Modern architecture embraced functionalism and mass-production and has had a major influence on the way we think about technology in architecture to this day. With the effects of the Marshall Plan and economic stability in the post-war context, construction was boosted by developmentalism and housing policies, which resulted in an increasing number of buildings with automation systems, most notably the Seagram Building, built in 1958. At the same time, futuristic avant-garde groups such as ArchiGram and the Japanese Metabolists started to emerge with their proposals envisioning different ways to experience life and the built environment through the possibilities of technology applied to architecture.

Up until the 1970s and 1980s, almost all controls (thermostats and valves) and even central control stations for large commercial buildings continued to be hydraulic and pneumatic, but automated control systems improved over the years andbegan to be revised with the advent of digital computers. At the same time, cybernetic theories were introduced, and soon, the paradoxical concept of "Smart Buildings" emerged in the United States, which meant buildings with any kind of automated management and control system - a distinguishing feature at the time, as technology played a key role in marketing and sales by creating falsely futuristic images of buildings with computerized systems. In this context, building sensors gained popularity for being able to identify and react to heat, smoke, light intensity, etc. At this point, these mechanismswere still based on actions programmed by man, in other words, a system that is not yet capable of learning from the events.

As technology continued to improve, the concept of Smart Buildings started to also focus on the design process, construction techniques, components, and environmental issues. BIM has become more sophisticated, allowing for more practical and affordable designs and a more intelligent construction site.

By the late 1980s, the central computer began to give way toindividual devicesthat would communicate back to the central system, and by1995,with the growing popularity of the internet,the central control automation hardware has given way to cloud-based software operated from any web-linked computer. With inexpensive local controllers with internet connectivity, it became possible to report large amounts of data to central software in the cloud, containingvaluable informationthat the system can use to evaluate and improve itself.This way, issues related to comfort and waste of materials and energy areresolved, leading to amore efficient operation of complex building systems.

With the combinationof artificial intelligence and processes of digitalization and automation in architecture, the industryis now seeing rapid innovation while also enabling more possibilities and more creativity in architectural design. Computational and generative design tools can be used to automateroutine tasks,optimize rapidly,and also create highly complex designs.But the most dynamic developmentis perhaps the digitalization of construction, which has become safer and more creative while also improving efficiency.

Looking forward, we can certainly expect to see more systems in which the digital tools are starting to contact the physical world so that we can confirm that the design in the computer can actually be printed or fabricated in the real world. Using digital design and fabrication technologies, this potential is already becoming a reality. For example, researchers from the Block Research Group at the ETH Zurich were able to calculate and construct a self-supporting shell structure using the minimal necessary material, resulting in an ultra-thin, sinuous concrete roof system with an average thickness of just 5 centimeters. Another group that stands out in this field is the ICD/ITKE University of Stuttgart, with many types of research and constructions that indicate the growing influence of robotics in architecture, as seen in their latest project, the Maison Fibre, showcased at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale.

Adopting digital approaches in architecture will likely lead to more innovation and an even more dynamic field. Automation has slowly made its way into architecture and construction, and from now on, this collaboration can lead to novel strategies, as well as help revisit vernacular solutions, to improve the built environment. What we are seeing is actually a new era of architecture, where absolute precision becomes the norm, allowing us to efficiently build almost everything we can imagine.

This article is part of the ArchDaily Topic: Automation in Architecture. Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and projects. Learn more about our monthly topics. As always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.

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A Brief History of Automation in Architecture - ArchDaily

End-of-line packaging automation specialist Pearson Packaging Systems and vision software company Plus One Robotics have joined forces to offer simpler solutions for complex packaging challenges.

As robots have become an integral part of manufacturing, and distribution and warehouse automation, the extent of what can be automated often hinges on how well the robot sees and interprets the data. Vision software specialist, Plus One Robotics, uses 3D cameras to identify the three-dimensional geometric surfaces, edges, and corners of products and determines size, shape, height and location in real-time. The integration of machine learning also often referred to as artificial intelligence (AI) further boosts the robots ability to accurately pick when vision data alone is not entirely conclusive. The third layer of operational excellence is a human-led supervision system called Yonder that closes any remaining performance gaps by enabling a remote robot controller to solve exceptions without delay while training the AI to adapt over time.

For the first application, Pearson Packaging Systems is integrating Plus One Robotics PickOne and Yonder software into its depalletising cell to enable handling of mixed or rainbow pallets. Until now, this task could not be addressed efficiently because reflective or newly introduced cases would cause frequent stoppages that required manual intervention resulting in substantial downtime and lack of labour savings. PickOne, on the other hand, scans the pallet layers to determine optimal pick positions. If vision data is inconclusive, the system consults its continuously growing library of AI data. And if neither of those result in a high enough pick confidence, PickOne automatically generates a Yonder request to call in human intervention.

The partnership is an exciting opportunity to automate increasingly complex tasks with consistency and simplicity for reliable throughput, said Michael Senske, President & CEO of Pearson Packaging Systems. Since we are nowhere near replacing humans with the ability to think, reason and learn, supervised autonomy gives us the ability to handle tasks such as sorting random, overlapping or overhanging products or introducing new SKUs without programming in an efficient way.

AI-Driven vision is particularly beneficial in warehouse, e-commerce fulfilment and distribution centres that handle a multitude of SKUs. Manufacturers offering popular party mixes or variety packs are also increasingly interested in improving their efficiencies with the help of AI and vision-powered automation.

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Non-uniform automation challenges addressed by Pearson and Plus One Robotics - Logistics Manager