Category Archives: Automation

DUBLIN, August 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Worldwide Infrastructure Automation Market - Drivers, Opportunities, Trends, and Forecasts: 2016-2022" report to their offering.

According to this research, the Worldwide Infrastructure Automation Market is expected to reach $65.48 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of around 19.9% during the forecast period 2016-2022. Increasing labor costs, human errors, demand for improving consistency & compliance, and technological advancements are forcing organizations to focus on automating their traditional infrastructure to speed up the productivity. The increasing demand for alignment of IT with business needs is one of the major drivers for adopting automation into the business environment.

The adoption of automation for streamlining the tasks is being introduced into systems mainly to address the changing business requirements and to fulfil the demand for improved productivity. Further, rapidly growing urbanization and advancements in technology have created a huge demand for infrastructure automation. Infrastructure automation is the process of scripting the environment, which enables organizations to manage and monitor IT processes without any human intervention. The scripting comprises of installation of OS, configuring servers on situations, and configuring the software & situations to communicate with each other. Infrastructure automation offers agility, flexibility, and improvement in productivity in less time.

These benefits are driving the organizations to adopt automation into their infrastructure to compete in the ever-changing market. The major software companies such as Wipro, HPE, and IBM are investing in the growth of technology to offer enhanced services to end-users.

Companies Mentioned

Key Topics Covered:

1 Industry Outlook

2 Report Outline

3 Market Snapshot

4 Market Outlook

5 Market Characteristics

6 Solutions: Market Size and Analysis

7 Services: Market Size and Analysis

8 Infrastructure: Market Size and Analysis

9 Deployment Model: Market Size and Analysis

10 End-Users: Market Size and Analysis

11 Regions: Market Size and Analysis

12 Competitive Landscape

13 Vendor Profiles

14 Other Dominant Vendors

15 Global Generalists

16 Companies to Watch For

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b856h6/worldwide

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Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager rel="nofollow">press@researchandmarkets.com

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Worldwide Infrastructure Automation Market 2016-2022: Key Vendors are GE, Schneider Electric, ABB, Rockwell ... - Markets Insider

Huge malware and ransomware attacks often grab the headlines, with WannaCry and NotPetya as recent high profile examples. News cycles endlessly discuss who was affected, how these attacks occur, and what can be done about it. For many organizations and individuals, the loss of a network or the compromise of data is big news and really important.

At the same time, however, we tend to take the services provided by our critical infrastructure resources for granted. We flip a switch and the lights and air conditioning turn on. We turn the tap and fresh, clean water pours out. Goods are delivered, airplanes land on time, and the stock market hums along. But the risks and security of these critical infrastructure resources often flies under the radar.

We may sometimes hear about the targeting of an electrical grid in far off places, but the potential for high-profile cyberattacks on the 16 critical infrastructure sectors identified here in the United States, and the resulting ramifications, are not in the American publics psyche to the degree they should be.

Malicious cyber activity targeted at the nations critical infrastructure including water systems, transportation, energy, finance, and emergency services are particularly worrisome because the interruption of those services can have devastating effects on our economy, impact the well being of our citizens, and even cause the loss of life.

Hackers have a variety of motivations for cyberattacks mischief, bullying, and financial gain among them. However, for our critical infrastructure sectors, attacks can also come from highly motivated cyberterrorists or hacker groups affiliated with nation states or political factions looking to further their cause or establish a military or strategic advantage.

In some cases, these attackers might want to dramatically disrupt public services; in other cases, their goals are much darker, such as wanting consumers to lose faith in the nations financial sector.

There have been documented attacks on critical infrastructure, such as two successful efforts to disrupt the Ukraine power grid in 2015 and 2016. But such events have always seemed safely far enough away. However, this past July, the U.S. government warned nuclear power plants about escalated attacks on their facilities. Such warning ought to make people sit up and take notice. With critical infrastructures increasingly online, interconnected to other resources, and often in the hands of private industry, its time that we elevate this conversation.

The challenge, however, is that in many cases attacks on the critical infrastructure are less than obvious. Many of these intrusions are low and slow. These subtle attacks often resulting in incremental changes to the compromised system worry many security experts because theyre so hard to detect incrementally. Its relatively easy to recognize when major attacks happen, and the victims can then move to counter them. But sophisticated intrusions often subtly work together to eventually become a strategic liability to our country. Imagine a series of malicious activities that, once in place, are able to affect a regions ability to provide a reliable water supply, safely transport oil and gas, or provide timely emergency services.

So what can be done?

The United States critical infrastructure is owned and operated by thousands of entities, and the security problem is so interdependent and complex that were often paralyzed in determining where to start. To move forward, then, lets recall the Chinese proverb: The journey of 1,000 miles starts with one small step.

We need to start by getting security practitioners, critical infrastructure operators, and other groups to agree that securing these sectors is a 10-year problem, not a one-year problem.

Next, protecting our critical infrastructure requires a team effort. The Government cant solve the problem (critical infrastructures are primarily owned and operated by the private sector), and private companies cant be expected to take on other nations cyber militaries. By starting to work together in small ways, broadening security expertise, and conducting joint cyber projects, industry and government can begin to develop the muscle memory necessary to tackle bigger things.

Several critical infrastructure sectors need to start by developing better ways to automatically share threat and vulnerability information within their industries one mans detection is another mans prevention. While some sectors have made serious progress in this area, others have lagged behind. And as critical infrastructure resources continue to become interconnected, the weakest link problem becomes increasingly relevant.

Companies also need to focus more on exploring all dimensions of their risk; too often we focus only on Vulnerabilities and Threats. They need to also ask: What are the bad consequences Im trying to avoid? Consequence-based engineering, the practice of engineering out all the potential bad outcomes from the beginning of the system design process, needs to become the standard for the development of all critical infrastructure architectures, whether physical or virtual.

Finally, critical infrastructure operators need to increasingly embrace security automation strategies to complement their safety-oriented operational technology strategies. The best way find the incremental intrusions and respond in a coordinated and comprehensive fashion is through automation. Human eyes often cant see the low-and-slow attacks, and we cant respond fast enough once a breach has been detected.

Its well-documented that the IT industry is in the midst of a digital revolution that is impacting all segments of the economy, from how people work and interact, to how governments serve their citizens. But less appreciated is the fact that were also on the verge of a security revolution:

Security strategy is one of ubiquity, integrated to work as a contiguous system and powered by automation.

So, in a variation of the it takes a village to raise a family saying, developing a strategic approach to critical infrastructure security takes a critical mass of cooperating people who leverage the best of breed technologies and strategies to ensure our infrastructures not just survive, but thrive. At the same time, we need to better manage the problem of complexity so that it doesnt overwhelm network operators. Automated security systems, managed by a strong guild of security professionals who practice working together in times of non-crisis will be able to meet the needs of the villagers they serve - at digital speeds, and without compromising security.

Watch Phils recent video where he discusses the strategic nature of attacks against critical infrastructure and the actions necessary to bring focus on finding effective security measures.

Excerpt from:

Securing Our Nation's Critical Infrastructure Takes A Villageand Automation - CSO Online

Technology is pervading each and every aspect of an organization. With advanced technologies, the number of new applications innovated and introduced as seen an overwhelming rise. Today, we see different apps/solutions that take care and automate different aspects of work in an organization. But while technology is helping to improve the results and effectiveness of tasks and processes, a recent study by Randstad US study which examined perceptions, expectations, and attitudes of job seekers in a job search process, finds that humans are often frustrated when a job search experience is overly automated.

"The findings reinforce what we've believed for quite some time, that successful talent acquisition lies at the intersection between technology and human touch," says Linda Galipeau, CEO, Randstad North America. "By leveraging emerging technologies, we are able to deliver on our clients' and candidates' expectations in a predominately digital world, but with more freedom to focus on the human connection. If done correctly, the right combination of personal interaction with the power of today's intelligent machines can create an experience that is inherently more human."

About 82% respondents of the study, which took feedback from 1,200 people, said that they were regularly frustrated when job experiences were overly automated, with 95% saying that automation should aid and not replace the recruitment experience. In fact, 87% respondents rue that technology has made the job search experience impersonal.

While adoption of emerging technologies offers a seamless digital experience, it is also drastically changing how people connect to jobs. But, 82% of the survey respondents reveal that these innovative technologies come second to human interaction and personal touch. Job seekers find companies that prioritize human interaction, more appealing compared to companies that prioritize technology.

The things that most influenced a candidate's positive impression about a company were the amount of personal and human interaction they experienced during the job search process, and the hiring manager/recruiter they worked with.

While 91% agreed that technology has significantly enhanced the job search process and made it more effective, the time taken and the communication level during the hiring process could greatly affect the impression about the potential employer, and these impressions had lasting effects. According to the survey, 33% of the respondents said that they will never reapply or refer a friend to the company where they had a negative experience during the job search process.

"Employers today, and in the future, will be judged by the experience they create for prospective new hires," adds Galipeau. "Job candidates are empowered to provide instant feedback on employers, rating a company's candidate experience just as they would rate a movie or a product. In a tightening labor market, companies cannot afford to lose potential talent due to a poor hiring experience. And in a technology-driven world of talent, it's not only about how a company markets itself, but what others say about the company that has a positive impact on employer branding."

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Does Over-Automation in Recruitment Help? - HR Technologist

Despite the undercurrent of fear about the impact of automation on jobs, a new study of 160 Australian CFOs suggests that more finance jobs will be created than replaced by automation.

The study, sponsored by recruiter Robert Half, has found that 46 percent of Australian CFOs are planning to expand their permanent staff headcount to help implement their company's automation efforts over the coming 12 months, while 36 percent plan to increase temporary or contract staff.

The vast majority of the CFOs surveyed, 86 percent, agree that workplace automation will cause a shift in required skillsets, rather than eliminate jobs altogether.

"Increased automation within Australian workplaces is not about destroying jobs, but rather, adapting to change -- which in turn leads to new opportunities," David Jones, senior managing director at Robert Half Asia Pacific, said in a statement.

"While automation may diminish some routine manual roles, it will lead to faster decision-making, reduce the risk of errors, and eliminate stresses associated with laborious task-management responsibilities. These benefits are available to those companies who embrace workplace automation rather than resist it."

According to the study, the top skill finance professionals need to focus on are problem-solving, followed by strategic vision, commercial acumen, and communication.

Data collection was identified by 88 percent of respondents as one of the finance functions that are either already automated or likely to be automated within three years, followed by invoicing at 85 percent, financial report generation at 84 percent, data entry at 77 percent, and credit management at 77 percent.

"Finance professionals will need to develop skills that complement and leverage the capabilities of automation -- rather than simply hand over control. More advanced technology requires additional, well-developed skills, such as advanced data analysis, interpretation skills, and decision-making skills," Jones said.

Another recent IDC study sponsored by Salesforce showed that AI-driven automation will have a positive impact on productivity, revenues, and job creation.

From 2017 to 2021, the study predicts that AI-powered CRM will create more than 16,000 new direct jobs and AU$19 billion in increased revenue in Australia over the next five years. Improved productivity in Australia will account for AU$4 billion of the revenue boost.

Enterprise investment in robotic process automation (RPA) is set to soar in Australia and New Zealand, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent from AU$216 million in 2016 to AU$870 million in 2020, according to a recent study by Telsyte.

The analyst firm said RPA -- which enables software robots to replicate the actions of human workers for routine tasks -- is now being used or investigated by six out of 10 ANZ organisations with more than 20 employees.

Additionally, 38 percent of organisations with more than 500 employees have active RPA programs in place.

The finance and insurance industries are expected to be the fastest adopters of RPA in the short term, according to Telsyte, although RPA can also be applied to industries with large customer support and request processing requirements, such as telecommunications and government.

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Automation will create more finance jobs than it replaces: Robert Half - ZDNet

By 2040, at least a fifth of the traffic on Interstate 80 in Iowa will be highly automated, a new Iowa Department of Transportation study says, and planners need to take into account the coming changes when preparing for the future.

The study, which is part of a larger DOT analysis aimed at positioning rural parts of I-80 for the future, says the higher levels of automation would mean increased capacity and fewer accidents.

"These technologies have the potential to really improve safety," said Brad Hofer, assistant director of the DOT's Office of Location and Environment, which was in charge of the study.

Automated vehicle technologies are under rapid development. And although driverless cars are far into the future, some experts say, the idea that a significant share of traffic along Iowa's main east-west highway would be highly automated in less than 25 years is striking.

"In the beginning, I think we were all taken aback by it," Hofer said. However, after discussions with industry sources and others, he thinks the prediction is "in the ballpark."

The DOT study, which was released last month, acknowledges that predicting the adoption of automated vehicle technologies is highly uncertain.

In fact, the DOT's prediction was that, by 2040, somewhere between 20 percent and 85 percent of traffic will be highly or fully automated.

That's a wide range. Even at the low end of use, however, safety gains would be significant, the study said.

"Even at 25% AV adoption, a nearly 20% crash reduction is anticipated," the study said.

At 85 percent, the study predicted, there would be a 50 percent reduction in fatalities and major injuries.

By 2060, the study said, 65 percent to 100 percent of traffic is expected to be highly automated.

There are varying levels of automation. The Society of Automotive Engineers defines six levels, with zero being not automated at all and 5 being fully automated. The DOT's predictions refer to the two highest levels, Hofer said.

There are significant differences between levels 4 and 5, said Dan McGehee, director of the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa.

"It doesn't mean you're going to have robots driving I-80," he said.

He said, however, that at level 4, specific functions have a high level of automation.

McGehee thinks driverless cars are far into the future.

"I don't see that happening for decades," he said.

Iowa has been aggressive in planning for the future. The state is currently in a partnership to create high definition maps of hundreds of miles of roads in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area to ready itself for higher levels of automation.

The I-80 study, which was launched a year ago, is aimed at informing policymakers on how to proceed with an increasingly busy rural I-80, particularly in eastern Iowa.

Much of the study is pointing to a six-lane I-80 in the future. Already, in eastern Iowa, traffic is approaching capacity, Hofer said.

The addition of automated technology helps with that problem, he said, but it likely would not stop the need for six lanes in the eastern part of the state.

Greater use of automated technologies could affect the timing and shape of expansion in some parts of the state.

"Adoption of AV buys us some significant capacity," Hofer said.

Several other considerations are going into the I-80 study. Already, the DOT has issued technical reports on the status of bridges spanning the interstate, the option of lane restrictions and investing in state highways that parallel Interstate 80. A final report is due by next year.

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DOT: Higher levels of automation in I-80's future | Government and ... - Quad City Times

Theres an old saying: Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life. Perhaps thats why we have kids aspiring to be professional athletes, musicians, chefs, reality TV stars andthe No. 1 profession cited by 3- to 4-year-oldssuperhero.

Luckily, as of 2015, engineer made it to No. 9 on the top 10 professions that kids want to be when they grow up, according to the Fatherly Imagination Report, based on 500 responses from kids between the ages of 1 and 10 years old.

But the need to get engineer and even machine operator and automation expert to the top of the list is important to the future of manufacturing, which is facing a serious shortage of workers. Over the next decade, nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs will likely need to be filled, according to a study by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, which noted that the skills gap is expected to result in 2 million of those jobs going unfilled.

The industry is responding by trying to change the image of manufacturing with outreach efforts, such as the annual Manufacturing Day. Launched in 2012 by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the goal of the day is to change the public perception of the factory floor as a dirty, monotonous, dead-end job, and demonstrate to the next-generation workforce that todays manufacturing jobs are highly skilled positions with growth opportunity.

There are indications that Manufacturing Day is working. According to Deloittes Manufacturing Day 2015 survey, 81 percent of students who attended Manufacturing Day events emerged more convinced that manufacturing provides careers that are interesting and rewarding. In 2016, that perception rose to 84 percent. Projections indicate that roughly 600,000 people attended Manufacturing Day events in 2016 and that 267,000 of them were students. That means that more than 224,000 students walked away from the 2016 event with a more positive perception of manufacturing, according to Deloitte.

Thats a good start. But the companies need more. They require tools that support the new image of modern manufacturing as an innovative environment that leverages automation, 3D printing, simulation, the Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile apps. They also need programs that support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educationin a somewhat unique way. To that end, manufacturers, suppliers, academia, government, associations and the entertainment industry are developing and delivering programs and promotions that make manufacturing interesting to Millennials, as well as provide a rewarding career path for veterans and skilled tradespeople.

Everyone is starting to understand the importance of STEM, but that wont convince someone to be an engineer, says Jay Flores, the global STEM ambassador at Rockwell Automation. We are trying to find things kids are already passionate about and show them the STEM behind it. Many students are becoming technology users but arent understanding the importance of being creators, he comments.

To change that, Rockwell has partnered with Discovery World, a science museum in Milwaukee. There, the kids can see scale replicas of landmarks around the city, such as Miller Park, where the Milwaukee Brewers play. The park has a fan-shaped convertible roof, which can open and close in less than 10 minutes. At the exhibit, students use a human-machine interface (HMI) and see the motors and controls behind the scenes to open and close the roof.

They might go to the ball park in the summer and never see the connection to STEM, Flores says. But we help bridge that gap and make the connection for them. To drive home the point even more, after playing with the Miller Park roof replica, students are then asked to look across the street to the Milwaukee Art Museum which has wings as part of the building architecture that open and closeand which are controlled by Rockwell technology.

Rockwell is a great example of how an automation supplier is making a difference in the minds of up-and-coming engineers. Associations have gotten in the game, too. PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies (and parent company of PMMI Media Group, publisher of Automation World), has developed a unique spin on a popular television program, hosting the Amazing Packaging Race at its PACK EXPO show.

This friendly competition brings together students from PMMI partner schools who form teams to visit exhibitor booths and complete specific packaging tasks, as well as share trivia-related tasks on social media platforms to earn extra points.

Like the Amazing Race, its a scavenger hunt where students learn about the industry and exhibitors have the opportunity to interact with students, says Stephan Girard, director of workforce development at PMMI. It is a hands-on approach to learning that builds teamwork skills and engages the participants. Last year, 25 teams and 30 exhibitors participated in the program.

It generates a lot of buzz on the show floor and is a conversation starter, Girard says. But ultimately, the companies that participate do so because they want to encourage the next generation to join the industry.

PMMI is actively supporting other workforce development efforts as well, such as offering a next-generation networking fair at PACK EXPO that connects employers in the processing and packaging industry with students about to enter the workforce. PMMI also offers mechatronics certification programs and online technical training to keep operators, technicians and maintenance staff up-to-date on basic skills.

The way in which schools and industry organizations interact with students and deliver educational programs is becoming a critical element to success, industry experts say, because we are at a unique moment in history.

In addition to the challenges we are facing related to brain drain from Baby Boomers retiring, we have an educational system that is out of alignment with the labor market, says Jennifer McNelly, president of 180 Skills, a provider of high-quality, yet affordable online career and technical skills courses. Although thats starting to change around STEM careers, it is still not meeting the market demands for the future workforce in manufacturing, she says. Thats because the pace of change on the education side is not as fast as the pace of change in the industry.

Educate to automate Prior to joining 180 Skills earlier this year, McNelly was president and executive director of the Manufacturing Institute, an affiliate of NAM dedicated to making U.S. manufacturers globally competitivea process that begins with developing world-class talent. The Manufacturing Institute launched the Dream It. Do It. network in 2005, an initiative offering local manufacturers, schools and community-based organizations the opportunity to promote manufacturing to students, parents and educators through teacher professional development and robotic camps, for example, providing hands-on learning and team building as students play with technology. In 2016, the network engaged 384,952 students, 68,971 parents and 19,489 educators.

McNelly is expanding on the institutes initiatives in her latest role at 180 Skills, which changes the classroom dynamic. The competency-based training is all online with more than 700 courses teaching technical and soft skillslike communication. It is not about knowledge acquisition, but about how to design custom learning paths to specific jobs, she says.

To that end, the curriculum is designed to be fluid to create a learning pathway for students and employees. Learning paths enable organizations to drag and drop any combination of skills courses into programs to achieve learning goals. Theres no limit to the number of learning paths a company can create, and enterprise pricing is as low as $7 per student per month. The setup also accommodates people requiring a certain baseline level of knowledge for an entry-level job.

Every day, a lot of people are screened out of good jobs for whatever reason, McNelly says. But an employer can tell them to take an online course to meet the criteria and come back for an interview. And then the onus is on the individual. If they complete [the course] then you have someone closer to what you need for an entry-level worker. It also demonstrates persistence and completion.

According to McNelly, 180 Skills has launched 13,000 careers in 12 weeks or less with a 90 percent employment rate.

Another interesting twist on education comes from Edge Factor, an entertainment company that produces original films about manufacturing heroes. The film 33, for example, focuses on Center Rock, the manufacturer of the high-tech drill used to construct an escape route for the 33 Chilean miners trapped during a mining accident in 2010. Feature film Metal & Flesh profiles Mike Schultz, an X Games champion who lost his leg in an accident and then designed a prosthetic leg capable of withstanding the immense force of extreme sports.

The first years of Edge Factor were about pulling back the veil and showing a different view of the industry, but I knew early on that it wasnt enough, says Jeremy Bout, host and executive producer of Edge Factor. So Bout evolved his work into an educational platform, called eduFACTOR. Here, the primary audience is teachers, but also includes students, parents and business. We listened to all four of those audiences to figure out what their individual frustrations were to bring something engaging and entertaining.

The eduFACTOR platform provides tools for educators to create live events, custom content and regional solutions. The latest addition to the programming comes in the form of a reality TV show called Reality Redesigned.

Reality Redesigned was built to create a different solution to a different problem, Bout says. While eduFACTOR creates a pipeline to meet industry and community needs, with a focus on mechatronics, Reality Redesigned was created to answer a different question: How do we get more students aware of the training available at local colleges that have jobs attached to them in the community?

Reality Redesigned was launched with Randolph Community College in Asheboro, N.C., inviting 15,000 students from schools in the area to participate in a design challenge. Five hundred students, ages 12-18, accepted the challenge and formed teams. Seventeen teams made it into the competition but only three teams made it to compete in the final challengeand TV show.

For the Reality Redesigned show, a new challenge was posed by race car driver Kurt Busch, who asked the three teams to redesign a new sign for his companys building. The 84-hour challenge gave the students access to computer-aided design (CAD), programming in Mastercam software, and the use of waterjet cutting technology, welding, lighting solutions and more.

In episode 1, Bout, the host of the show, makes it clear to the teams that there are three things to understand as they approach the challenge: scheduling, time tracking and materialsall terms that are used in the manufacturing industry. They must figure out what technologies and machines are available and who can help. They must build a spreadsheet and track every area they are working in to figure out how much time is spent. And because materials cost money, if something is to be machined out, there must be a line item around how much that costs.

During the show Bout tells the teams: The technology that you are about to learn helps build stuff that goes into space. This is what people use to build airplanes. The use of this technology helps people live longer. And the skills that you learn will help you push back the edge of whats possible.

The show is the perfect mix of Hollywood meets manufacturing, and for Bout, it is clearly getting through to the kids as he often sees the aha moment in their faces. I get to see it all of the time, he says. I see a significant shift in understanding.

Keeping it real The workforce of the future is not just about attracting new talent, but also keeping the existing workforce up to date on the ever-changing technology landscape. In manufacturing, that means preparing people to work in a digital environment.

In June, the North American Digital Capability Center (DCC) opened its doors as part of the UI Labs Innovation Center in Chicago. Founded by McKinsey & Co. in partnership with the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII), the learning center offers hands-on experience and workshops to help company leaders and their employees advance operations, design and productivity in this new way of working.

It is set up as a real shop floor producing real stuffin this case a compressor for a refrigeratorbut done in a risk-free environment that is an experiential environment to prepare workers with the skills required in digital manufacturing jobs.

In a demo, you are just seeing cool technology, says Katy George, senior partner at McKinsey. In the capability center, you are learning how to apply it and how to use that technology to drive performance improvement.

More than 50 technology partners are on site, bringing participants from a non-digital, lean current state to a higher-performing, digitally transformed future state, using artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital work assistance for operators, human-robot collaboration, augmented reality, additive manufacturing, advanced analytics and more.

The immersive experience is set up for learning. For example, on the shop floor of the DCC, we have Microsoft HoloLens and you can do predictive maintenance through augmented reality, immersing yourself into the job of a maintenance engineer, says Enno de Boer, principal at McKinsey. And if you cant get all of the information to fulfill the maintenance, a Skype call to an expert will help you perform the task.

Interestingly, the center is also looking at how automation affects job designwhat can be automated and what cant, which will be helpful to understand what it will take for an individual to be successful in the future manufacturing environment.

One thing is clear: Change will be constant and the future workforce must be prepared to continuously learn and adapt, McNelly says. Learning is a lifelong journey, not a destination with an endpoint.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle the industry must overcome to fill the skills gap is not advancements in technology or public perception of the industry, but human nature. We, as adults, must change our behavior and invite our children to be inquisitive.

We stop kids from asking the question why from the time they are little, and thats the most important question they can ask, says Rockwells Flores. All kids are born engineers. From the moment they open their eyes, everything is some kind of experiment. If we allow them to ask questions, or to jump in the mud and see what happens, theyll be better off in the future in exploring the why and how to do things differently.

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Innovating Automation Education - Automation World

SUMMARY:

Philip van der Wilt, EMEA VP and GM, ServiceNow, argues that there are areas of work that people will continue to excel at: creation, curation and communication.

Our recent research, Todays State of Work: At the Breaking Pointset out to examine exactly how far organisations are on the road to adopting intelligent automation. The research indicated that adding machines to everyday work drives revenue growth, creates new job opportunities and connects employees back to the work they want to do.

There is a certain leap of faith to overcome here i.e. the notion that automating our lives actually create jobs can appear paradoxical. After all, 87% of executives surveyed by ServiceNow say employees are worried that automation will eliminate jobs.

The leap in understanding we must make is clarified by applied futurist Tom Cheesewright, who in supporting us with the research, and explains that intelligent automation is as much about augmenting the human worker as it is about replacing them. Cheesewright explains:

To date the automation conversation has always been about doing more with less. But whether the tasks are physical or mental, theres a really exciting prospect of extending human capability. Intelligent automation can mean the time, scope and tools to just do more.

The technology model now presenting itself to us is therefore one where we can engineer business process efficiencies into the fabric of new data-driven business models. So how do we achieve this progression? Cheesewright adds:

Friction starts fires. The natural starting point for the application of intelligent automation is to focus on clear areas of business friction: administration, data entry, manual manipulation of information. Very often we find that back-office areas have seen years of stagnation and underinvestment. Addressing this can save resources and reduce risk, but, most importantly, it can create the platform for more transformative change.

Our aforementioned survey of 1,850 corporate leaders validates this need to move to a new tier of business operations. We found that 94% agree that intelligent automation could increase productivity, through the use of Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning, to streamline decision making and to improve the speed and accuracy of business processes.

Further findings from the survey found:

Despite a very tangible level of automation in many areas of our lives, is the world of business keeping pace? In a world of smart homes, smart cars, smart commerce and smartphones, has the workplace itself been holding back against the benefits of smart automation intelligence?

Cheesewright explains:

In my experience, businesses have been dissuaded from starting intelligent automation projects due to the up-front investment costs and a certain nervousness about inflexibility. Automating many workplace tasks has long been possible, but doing so meant expensive and rigid hard-coding of processes, while the operational status quo people remained relatively cheap and highly adaptable.

As with all areas of technology, progress has brought lower cost and greater robustness, but it has also brought more flexibility to workplace automation. Leaders are gaining confidence that the investment will deliver returns and not lock them in.

The automation opportunity is huge, but this does also mean that theres a learning curve, an adoption leap and (for some organisations at least) a perceived chasm between where they operate today and where they could be operating with task and service automation in place. Cheesewright says:

There is a natural apprehension about making fundamental changes to the complex house of cards that is many organisations. The first step is to compartmentalize risk inside clear functions. When processes, inputs and outputs are understood, then experimentation which is cheaper now in the age of cloud computing than ever before can begin.

The most forward-thinking organisations have recognized that there is an overhead to this compartmentalization, but that is the price of rapid adaptability in an age of accelerated change.

So how do we get automation? How do we start our implementation path to automated enhancement? Do we simply call an IT consultant or Systems Integrator, or both? Which department should we start the automation process in, or should it be a company-wide initiative?

Our survey pointed out that IT support is the best at business process efficiency, while Human Resources (HR) is the worst. So, while HR can be named the department most in need of a reboot, does that mean we shouldnt ever start outside of HR?

The truth may be more cerebral than a one department at a time approach the application of automation actually comes down to a people issue.

Cheesewright believes that tomorrows workplace is indeed populated by more machines than people. He is also adamant that intelligent automation is set to transform every industry.He explains:

Its increasingly clear that the workers worthy of a bionic boost will exhibit three skills that are hard for the machines to replicate: the abilities to curate, create, and communicate.

It is these 3-Cs people (and their abilities to exhibit these skills and characteristics) that firms should identify when looking for where to apply the automation advantage. Where the 3-Cs flourish, humans outstrip machines. But it is these precise areas that can now be enhanced by automation.

In the automation-powered future, some machine power will exist as a direct replacement for its human counterparts. These machines and automation controls will work faster, cheaper and, very often, better. But many automation layers (and automated machines) will augment their human partners, expanding their innate skills and boosting productivity. Cheesewright says:

Even without the neural interfaces of science fiction, the gap between humans and machines is narrowing all the time. Multiple sensor inputs combined with machine learning can dramatically increase the apparent bandwidth of communication between us and our tools. The next twenty years will see us create augmented super-humans of creativity, insight and communication.

Working out our new living relationship with automation may be daunting for some, but it is a positive inevitability with a beneficial long-term outcome. Its time to learn to love our machines.

Image credit - Robot and human connecting through electricity bolts Pixelbliss - Fotolia.com

Disclosure - ServiceNow is a diginomica premier partner at time of writing.

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The 3-Cs of intelligent automation Greasing the new engineering between people & machines - Diginomica

Over the past 15 years, Australians have reduced the amount of time spent on physical and routine tasks at work by two hours each week thanks to automation. Retail workers have spent less time ringing up items and more time helping customers, bank employees less time counting banknotes and more time giving financial advice.

And if Australia plays its cards right, we could be making $2.2 trillion from automation by 2030, according to research commissioned by Google.

Dr Andrew Charlton, Director of research firm AlphaBeta who undertook the study, says Australian policy makers and companies must take action now to embrace technology while also taking steps to reskill Australia's most vulnerable workers.

The study in question, The Automation Advantage [PDF], analysed 20 billion hours of work in Australia to understand how every Australian job is being changed by automation.

"More than changing what jobs we do, automation is changing the way we do our jobs," said Dr Charlton.

"Most of that change isn't coming from the loss of physical and routine jobs. It comes from workers switching to different tasks within the same jobs as machines take over an increasing load of dangerous and repetitive routine work."

Dr Charlton says the rise of machines will make human work more "human".

Analysis of recent trends in worker satisfaction, workplace injuries and pay levels for tens of thousands of Australians confirms that machines are now shouldering our riskiest, least enjoyable and least valuable tasks within a job, reducing danger and improving work satisfaction and meaning, according to Dr Charlton.

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Dr Charlton says workplace injuries will fall by 11 per cent and 62 per cent of low-skilled workers will experience improved satisfaction.

"For the most part, workers will be able to easily adjust their work routine and remain in their current jobs," Dr Charlton says. "But for instances where automation leads to higher unemployment, the Australian economy can only realise a dividend of $1.2 trillion over 15 years if we redeploy workers that are displaced by machines into new forms of work."

If Australian companies accelerate their adoption of technology, Dr Charlton believes we could see another $1 trillion in the Australian economy over the next 15 years.

To date, 9 per cent of ASX companies are making sustained investments in automation, compared with more than 20 per cent in the US and 14 per cent in leading automation nations globally.

"It would be dire for Australia's competitiveness if companies continued with a business as usual approach," Dr Charlton says. "Slowing down the pace of automation, rather than accelerating it may do more harm than good, depriving Australia of the resulting productivity benefits and potentially reducing the global competitiveness of local industries."

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Australia needs to embrace, not fear, automation, new study says - The Age

General Motors' Cruise Automation subsidiary has taken the plunge and launched its own ride-sharing service using self-driving cars. But the service, called Cruise Anywhere, is only available to Cruise employees in San Francisco.

Cruise Anywhere is still in its beta development stage, hence the employee-only restriction, according to TechCrunch. Cruise claims about 10 percent of its San Francisco employees are already using the service, and there is enough interest that the company has had to form a waiting list.

Some employees are even using Cruise Anywhere as their primary form of transportation, according to the company. One employee has made over 60 trips in the past three weeks or so. While humans have had to take over manual control in some instances, Cruise claims the the majority of of miles have been covered autonomously.

Cruise employees use a smartphone app to hail one of the company's autonomous Chevrolet Bolt test cars. The service is available seven days a week and 16 to 24 hours a day, depending on fleet scheduling. It covers virtually all of San Francisco, limited only by the availability of accurate digital maps.

While Cruise has used a smartphone app in its testing before, the company hopes to build Cruise Anywhere into a fully-functioning ride-sharing service. It believes such a service will help commercialize its autonomous-driving tech faster. But with ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft already heavily entrenched in autonomous driving, Cruise faces plenty of competition.

Cruise's beta autonomous ride-sharing service is a major step, but the company still has a long way to go. It faces a crowded field of companies developing autonomous-driving tech for ride sharing...and the GM subsidiary still must convince people who don't already work for it to trust self-driving cars.

Link:

GM's Cruise Automation Running Autonomous Ride-Sharing ... - The Drive

With an increased demand for social media automation from marketers, here are some must-knows that guide you to identify tasks that are best automated and the ones that can only be better executed by humans

Modern-day marketing needs have turned social media marketing into a must. This has gradually led to an increase in demand for social media automation for various social campaigns, so the productivity and efficiency of marketing teams is enhanced and they can focus on strategies rather than repetitive social media tasks.

Social media marketing plays a pivotal role as a channel to garner leads, as a great way to boost brand persona and for interacting with consumers in real-time. Social selling strategies have helped organizations boost overall business revenues.

When it comes to understanding and unlocking the power of automation for social media marketing, the first step is to identify what can be (or should be) automated, so that it frees up a marketers time to allow more focus on strategy and creativity.

Social media automation current trends

With AI now the buzzword in everything martech, some of the advancements that have changed social media marketing are listed below:

Benefits of using tools for social media marketing

Traditionally, smaller companies would manually create their social media profiles, and then focus on posting something relevant at least once a day. This is how the business journey slowly began, with Facebook acting as a key platform for individual business-owners and small enterprises trying to use it to create organic awareness and reach.

Earlier, professionals often stressed upon the cost-effective factor as being one of the main advantages of social media marketing. It served to increase brand awareness and reputation online at a lesser outlay.

So, how are marketers using popular tools for social media automation and how is it helping them with quick responses to prospects? Naor Chazan, Executive Director of Marketing at SmartLinx says,

While we have a lean marketing department, we do not outsource key marketing functions such associalmedia. This means we must work as efficiently as possible. Thats where Hootsuite comes in. We use it to schedule posts on oursocialmediachannels LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. It not only streamlines the process, but enables us to view all oursocialmediacontent at once. As a company that provides solutions to make workforce management more efficient and centralized, its only natural that our marketing department would take advantage of technology that does the same thing for the marketing space.It also enables multiple team members to operate within the samesocialmedia(Hootsuite) environment, which really adds to the efficiencieswith multiple contributors, but one person who is responsible for editing the messaging to have a unified voice. Hootsuite is also convenient in that it allows us to create streams to monitor specific industry thought leaders, keep an ear to the ground on key issues affecting our customers and even see how our partners and competitors are communicating viasocial.

JimFosinaCEO ofFosinaMarketingGroup adds,

There are a number of social media campaign management platforms (Sprinklr being the leading player) that allow organizations and/or agency partners the ability to centralize the connection between customer/prospect and brand regardless of the specific social media platform they are engaging with. Gone are the days when companies needed to go to each platform and launch siloed efforts. Whats great about these unified platforms is the ability to monitor the interaction between content and consumer on a social media channel by channel basis, they also allow the brand to be a part of the social media community and take an active role in driving and/or coordinating the conversation happening in that channel. The more that the brand can understand the conversation and the content that seems to be resonating with the community, the better job the brand can do to shape their ownmarketmessage to be hyper relevant to the community. This level of reporting also helps the brand understand who the true leaders and influencers are within the community, by monitoring these channels. Platforms allow brand owners the ability to identify if there are any issues that are being raised that would have an impact on the value of the brand, so that these items can be addressed within the social media community as quickly as possible to present answers and prevent issues from spreading to the general population.

A coordinated platform allows for ease of use in maintaining a dialogue with customers, identifying issues and remedies to those issues and allows for a contextual path to introduce and/or poll new ideas and thoughts about new brand ideas to those that are truly engaged in discussion regarding the brand and/or related topic.

Automation for small, mid and larger businesses

Small businesses may end up requiring automation for a fewer number of social media marketing tasks. Hence, its common for small businesses to hire an in-house social media marketer to cater to their online advertising needs. Doing things manually is still possible for a smaller brand.

Most digital marketing agencies, who manage multiple social media accounts of mid to large businesses, need to ensure a regular flow of relevant posts while making sure posts go up even on holidays. Automation can offer timely scheduling, thereby relieving marketers from performing routine tasks on multiple accounts or platforms.

When it comes to larger brands or businesses, social media objectives differ. Furthermore, based on the industry, the strategy around social media content to garner followers would also change.

Social Media Automation Tasks

Social media marketing and its overall management involve regular posting, customized to each media platform, in sync with the brands messaging format and flow of communication. A thorough social media plan would ideally involve creation of a content schedule customized to suit each platform. Automation greatly helps in quick execution, but to enhance the overall effect of your social media goals, marketers need to create a relevant structure and plan that serves as a guideline or reference point.

Social media automation supports a companys social media objectives by giving them the opportunity to do it better, faster and on a larger scale despite availability of fewer human resources.

When a brand starts growing their number of followers online, instant replies, constant lead nurturing and regular social media activities become necessary. It may not always be possible for social media professionals to ensure all this manually, and with the constant increase in competition, delayed reactions can make you lose prospects.

Most commonly automated tasks

Midsize to enterprise businesses have started using chatbots to reply to social media messages, and it has become a huge draw for them, as elements like scheduling, automatic reposting, replies, content curation can easily be undertaken using automation. Some tools also allow audience segmentation, thereby enabling brands to excel where humans may slack.

Talking about how automation has helped in quicker response times to consumers, Naor Chazan adds, Last year, SmartLinx won a Stevie Award last for Customer Service of the Year. One reason is our quick response to customer inquiries. We can easily monitor our social media accounts on Hootsuite, and see which customer posts require an immediate response. Its so much easier than logging in to each platform separately. We can monitor all our accounts and quickly take action where needed.

Some of the common tasks that are largely automated today include:

Lead Management

Every social media marketer takes actions to collect leads. With online platforms opening the door to more lead-gathering capabilities, automation becomes important for marketers to be able to nurture and manage the rising numbers. It is impractical and nearly impossible to track or nurture leads manually. Furthermore, automation can also help with increasing your prospect universe once you set the parameters you are looking for.

A/B Testing

You can never say whether an online campaign will yield the desired results, but automation can help you prepare well. A/B testing (or split testing) is an important aspect of digital marketing. By testing your social media initiatives in terms of content and design, you can know what will resonate with your target audience and what may not do well.

Content distribution

Social media marketing plays a key role in how brands distribute content or engage with customers. Many social media tasks like monitoring brand mentions online, identifying influencers etc can be automated, but some key tasks may still need a human touch.

Content Sharing

Businesses today usually have two forms of content created for social media marketing purposes. One is the original content written specifically for the brand in the form of blogs and the other is curated content. Either way, sharing of content on multiple social media platforms can easily be automated and usually is.

Twitter List Building

Lists on Twitter allow marketers to follow larger groups of people at one go. Automating list-building for Twitter and having users automatically added to relevant lists helps garner more leads or followers and even influencers.

Online reputation

Automation can be useful to keep tabs on which company or user is talking about you. This can help brands maintain a positive online reputation, while also helping to monitor brand mentions.

Competitor Research

Tracking social behavior of your competitors can also be automated using monitoring tools that give you visibility into your competitors actions on social.

However, Naor Chazan advises, When it comes to making personal connections on social media, theres no substitute for personal, direct contact. If we are reaching out to a journalist or blogger, for instance, we will send a direct message on Twitter. Automation can only take you so far; we can miss opportunities when we become over-reliant on it.

Agrees Jason, Automate what you can in terms of service messaging i.e. shipping notifications, immediate customer response to issues, etc. Make sure that you do all you can within 24 to 48 hours to respond with a human being either via email and/or call center to remind the customer that he/she is being dealt with on a real-time basis with a real person, that if need be can escalate the issue to another human being. Consumers know about the messages that they receive from auto-responders. Where possible make these messages (delivered by email) look and feel less like machine-generated messages from a personalization design and content. The more that you can make it appear that someone (Jim) is sitting behind that autoresponder, the closer you will be to building a stronger bridge between you and the customer.Customers truly crave human connection, and a sense that they arent a number to your company, brings the human touch back into your systems, while you automate what you can.

What automation cannot do for you:

You can use effective tools to schedule posts or share them on multiple platforms with a single-click. But, to maximize the potential of your social media marketing efforts, your brand needs a customized content plan as to what kind of posts or messaging would be going up week on week, and aligned to the various social channels.

A company blog can be written with the aim to share information that is interesting to the target audience. Automated blogging picks content from other sites and uses machine learning capabilities to create content, but may not always give your brand the desired results. Thats because audiences largely look for the value-add in social media and copied or curated content may just not seem that interesting.

It is easy to use tools to support the various design elements or creative guidelines of multiple platforms. But, at the same time, to retain the overall brand look and feel, tailor-made creatives also need to be planned.

Some brands may only aim to have an increased brand awareness or social presence, while others may specifically want more followers and wish to make their content viral

Commenting on where social media marketers should not look at automation to help out, Jim adds, It is our sense that there is ALWAYS a need for human intervention. The technology is purely a means to make conversation more enabled and efficient. There must be human beings, who review data coming from these channels whether high level and/or granular and determine what is in the best interest of the brand in terms of messaging strategy. No level of automation and/or technology can replace the human being charting the path in terms of the most appropriate and relevant communication and interaction. Customers and Interactors want to know that they are dealing with a REAL company and a real level of human interaction. Automation has not yet mastered that level of true human interaction yet.

Knowing where to draw the line

Its important to know what to automate. Finding the right mix and using machine learning capabilities to support your manual efforts can go a long way in achieving desirable ROI on your social media marketing initiatives. Automation helps marketers focus on the larger picture. So, automating the right tasks can allow your brand positioning activities to explore newer formats.

Even well-known news sites like The Washington Post use algorithms to create headlines and story structures, but their posts are further edited by people before final use.

While the numbers of social media automation users continue to rise, due to its increased convenience, when it comes to planning your automation, it is always useful to understand where you can potentially lose out despite automating some key tasks, and what your automation may not be able to cover.

Until AI reaches the point of being or behaving like the human brain, it might not be the best idea to automate social media initiatives completely.

Key points to remember

These statistics now prove that social media marketing is not just a small part of an organizations overall marketing efforts, but can turn into a key medium. To utilize it to its full potential, the right mix of automation and human strategy is what will get you there.

Excerpt from:

What Social Media Automation Can and Cannot Get Right - MarTech Advisor