Category Archives: Automation

For most of this decade, call center automation efforts involving voice technologies have focused on speech analytics to monitor agents' interactions with customers. That is changing.

New voice tools provide the ability to initiate CRM contacts through voice interfaces, such as with Google Home and Amazon Echo. They can also divine new insights about customer experiences through voice analysis of calls that supplement traditional consumer surveys, and may even replace them in the future.

But these voice tools can help only to a point, as software vendors and their customers await better natural language processing (NLP) support.

"It's at a point where it's really accepted -- you talk to your car, you talk to your phone," said John Joseph, CEO of Scribe Software, a company based in Manchester, N.H., that focuses on CRM data integrations. His team demonstrated at the Salesforce World Tour stop in Boston in May a Salesforce-Amazon Echo implementation that enables voice-activated report generation.

"There's still a long way to go in terms of natural language [processing technology] understanding everything -- but it's remarkable where we are," he said.

The reason voice recognition or virtual assistants are still kind of dumb -- despite massive cloud compute power that can run circles around humans -- is that they are very literal, and they often over-simplify a human's request to the point where they miss the original premise. This can lead to off-topic suggestions or some variation of "Sorry, I don't understand."

On top of that, humans have powers of comprehension computers don't: We instinctively understand tone and emotion, and we can hear the syntactic nuance of clichs and other local idioms (such as the interchangeable use of soda, pop, tonic or Coke).

There's still a long way to go in terms of natural language understanding everything -- but it's remarkable where we are. John JosephCEO, Scribe Software

Think about this statement: Police help dog bite victim. How is NLP likely to interpret that? An NLP system has to work hard to figure out what you're saying (think I scream versus ice cream) before it can tackle context and hazard a guess as to what a customer is asking.

All that being said, companies hope to integrate more call center automation tools built around NLP as it improves, according to Deloitte customer operations leader Andy Haas, who co-authored a report analyzing the results of a survey of 450 call center executives earlier this year.

Business leaders are considering and even experimenting with next-generation voice recognition feeding into NLP, which, in turn, feeds into analytics systems that can automate customer service through the insights the analytics glean from the conversation, Haas said. While simple, targeted tasks can be completed now, operations executives pretty much agree that adequately reliable automation technology is a long way off from digitizing customer interactions; as in, decades.

"There might be a tipping point in the future, but it's not there yet," Haas said. "I don't think my clients think it's in the next five years, just like operations managers don't think interactions will be all-digital in the next five years. Will it happen in the next 20 years? Maybe."

One possible way new voice tools could advance call center automation is through analytics to determine customer sentiment for the purpose of future sales and customer retention efforts. For decades, the post-call follow-up survey has been the main method fueling such initiatives, but voice analytics are starting to supplement surveys.

There could be a point down the road where these audio mining systems replace surveys, and they could actually offer deeper insights about customer sentiment than the blunt instrument of the three-question, multiple-choice survey few take the time to fill out.

Haas said his survey showed that while call center volumes are going down in general, the interactions which escalate to calls are make or break in terms of the customer's relationship to the company. Call analytics tools, therefore, will become more and more important vehicles for customer retention.

"As you apply analytics, it will make an easier ROI [for investing in the technology]," Haas said. "It's going to be less pure volume, but more meaningful interaction."

Greg Hirschi, director of customer service operations at smartphone and tablet case manufacturer OtterBox, runs a 270-agent call center based in Colorado. The company regularly conducts customer surveys, which get 30% to 40% response, and the rich information they yield has led directly to eight-figure redesigns of customer experience processes, one example being warranty service, he said. Analytics can extend those insights to offer product teams feedback for future OtterBox models.

"From a consumer insight standpoint, for us, it's deeply valuable to understand how they use our products and what we can do to better design them," Hirschi said. "There's a knowledge gap between perceived customer use and actual customer use, and we use voice analytics to bridge that gap."

Terry Leahy, president and CEO of call analytics software vendor CallMiner, said he believes the old-school customer survey as a service tool should be replaced, and the funds companies invest in them would be better spent elsewhere. That being said, customer surveys will never go away he added. Call analytics can offer insight to marry with the results of surveys and to deepen a company's knowledge about its customer experience.

"We are now selling to marketing more than we ever did before, and that's where the budget for the survey usually is," Leahy said. "I think it's safe to say that you'll be seeing budget for surveys being diverted [toward] a better way to understand the actual voice of the customer than a derivative of it, which is the survey ... But surveys are never going away."

Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones have, for years, extended call center work to employees who want to work at home. But even the old-dog VoIP technology is teaching call centers new tricks.

Ryan Nichols, general manager of Zendesk Talk, said CRM systems are creating deeper and deeper VoIP integrations, such that service agents can escalate calls from channels to voice while in a customer's recording, without interruptions. This reduces call times dramatically because there's no cold-call script to launch into the discussion -- it's already going on via text, and the voice call is a continuation of that.

"Conversations don't need to come in via PSTN [public switched telephone network] anymore," Nichols said. "Someone doesn't have to dial in a 1-800 number they found on the website and navigate down to an agent."

These VoIP integrations have become so tight, he said, call centers are either no longer using traditional phone systems or they're skipping them altogether when equipping new facilities. Customer agents are the better for it because, when they can see context in the customer record, as well as the chat history, agents can perform more effective service.

Nichols is watching with interest how companies such as Uber and Lyft integrate voice into their smartphone apps, as well as home voice assistants such as Amazon Echo. Still, he said, there's a long way to go before we read a lot of CRM success stories tied to voice recognition and the NLP those types of implementations require.

"The question is, what happens when people have problems?" Nichols said, echoing what analysts have said all year: NLP is unreliable enough that the biggest challenge is understanding when and how to escalate service to better channels before losing the customer.

"How do you build a bridge between this conversation that's happening around your core service and your traditional support channels?"

Guide to buying call center speech analytics

The benefits and negatives of real-time speech analytics

Best and worst call analytics practices

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Call center automation advances, but only as far as NLP can take it - TechTarget

To help ensure the cybersecurity of self-driving cars, General Motors Co. has hired two well-known security researchers who hacked into a Jeep SUV.(Photo: Stan Honda / Getty Images)

To help ensure the cybersecurity of self-driving cars, General Motors Co. has hired two well-known security researchers who hacked into a Jeep SUV.

Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have been hired by GM subsidiary Cruise Automation, an autonomous vehicle software tech startup GM bought last year, Cruise founder and CEO Kyle Vogt confirmed in a tweet Friday.

A GM spokeswoman said Monday that Miller and Valasek also would be integrated into GMs cybersecurity team led by Jeffrey Massimilla, chief product cybersecurity officer since 2014. They will work as software engineers.

Miller and Valasek will be focused on the many challenges related to securing the autonomous vehicle ecosystem, a GM spokeswoman said in an email. Our cybersecurity mantra recognizes that in order to prevent the worst, you need to engage the best. We believe we can build more secure systems by bringing on the people who excel at defeating them. Protecting the safety and security of our customers is of utmost importance.

The security researchers are known for their remote hack of a 2014 Jeep Cherokee that included disabling the SUVs engine functions and controlling interior features such as air conditioning, locks and the radio.

The hack was detailed in a 2015 Wired magazine article and led to Fiat Chrysler recalling 1.4 million vehicles that were shown to be vulnerable to computer hacking. Owners of Jeeps, Chryslers, Dodges and Rams with vulnerable entertainment systems were sent a flash drive to upgrade vehicle software.

Valasek most recently was security lead at Uber Technologies Inc., according to his personal website. The Pittsburgh resident said on the website that hes interested in automotive security research and reverse engineering, among other things. Miller most recently worked for Chinese ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing.

All automakers, including GM, have been ramping up cybersecurity efforts as self-driving vehicles inch closer to reality. Some, including Fiat Chrysler, have started to pay outside security experts bounties for their hacking information. Fiat Chrysler last year began to offer up to $1,500 bounties for information through a partnership with Bugcrowd Inc., a crowdsourced security-testing company.

GM in early 2016 bought San Francisco-based startup Cruise Automation to help it with autonomous vehicle software development. The Cruise team has grown from about 40 people in California to more than 100, and GM plans to hire 1,100 over the next five years.

The Detroit automaker has said it is giving Vogt responsibility for operations and financial performance of GMs autonomous vehicle business.

GM and Cruise are testing more than 50 self-driving Chevrolet Bolt EVs in Metro Detroit, San Francisco and Scottsdale. The company recently built 130 more self-driving Bolt EVs that GM said in June would recently be deployed for testing in the three sites.

mburden@detroitnews.com

(313) 222-2319

Staff Writer Ian Thibodeau contributed.

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GM hires Jeep hackers to join Cruise Automation - Detroit News - The Detroit News

NEW DELHI: Automation is bringing about changes in work choices like never before as some profiles get obsolete and new job roles make their way to cyber security, cloud and Big Data, among others, says a report.

According to a recent research by Simplilearn Career Data Labs, some of the job roles that may soon go off the radar include those of software test engineer, system engineer, data entry operator and the like.

New IT jobs that will be in demand are expected to be in segments like Big Data and data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things, cloud computing and cyber security, among others.

"The IT industry is seeing the impact of two major trends -- one, that of AI and machine learning. And second, that of legacy skill sets going out of date," Simplilearn Chief Business Officer Kashyap Dalal said.

Dalal further said that "while there is risk to jobs due to these trends, the good news is a huge number of new jobs are getting created as well in areas like cyber security, cloud, DevOps, Big Data, machine learning and AI. It is clearly a time of career pivot for IT professionals to make sure they are where the growth is".

Automation is gaining prominance in sectors like engineering, manufacturing, automobiles, IT and banking. With increasing adoption of automation, labour-intensive jobs are expected to take a hit.

According to a report by digital economy training company Simplilearn, roles such as data analyst and project manager will continue to generate interest, but the skills required to perform these roles will witness a shift.

The report noted that automation can never replace people. That said, to make themselves relevant, employees should evaluate the career choices of future and start bridging skill gaps to fit into the evolving business world.

Based on a survey of 7,000 IT professionals from key metros, the report said that over 50 per cent of IT professionals with work experience of 4-10 years have invested in courses and training programs to help them build new skills.

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Automation shaking up work choices, upskilling key - Economic Times

There are three main factors contributing to the increasing interest in intelligent automation (aka robotic automation) Avanademanaging director Sarah Adam-Gedge (pictured) told iTWire.

The digital transformation wave is continuing to break across most industries, organisations are getting better at handling their data, and they are hitting a productivity plateau after offshoring and industrialising processes, they need to find new ways to improve their competitiveness.

A related issue, she said, is that there are jobs that people are increasingly reluctant to do, as in the case of Woodside Petroleum's experimental use of a NASA Robonaut.

But despite those improvements in data management, data is still one of the biggest challenges to adoption, suggested Adam-Gedge. It is not enough to merely apply fresh technology to existing data, so the area is "very much a work in progress." Organisations should be thinking in terms of "big insights" rather than "big data.

Pegasystemsvice-president of robotics Francis Carden has a somewhat different view. He sees robotic automation as "tactically strategic" in the sense that it allows existing processes to be streamlined as a stopgap until they can be reengineered.

Customers are demanding "modern" interactions with organisations, and "you can't do that with all this legacy (software)", he told iTWire.

But what you can do is look for the frequently performed, time-consuming manual tasks required by legacy software and automate those. For example, a customer or employee onboarding process that involves multiple systems can be made much faster through the use of automation.

Such projects can be carried out very quickly as a stopgap, while new software is implemented on the Pegasystems platform. This approach is being used by the company's customers in the banking, financial services and healthcare sectors, Carden said, adding that Pegasystems' local customers include Telstra, Westpac and ANZ Bank.

Companies using dozens of applications won't be able to compete with those using newer and more streamlined systems, he suggested.

For example, a chatbot built using this sort of technology can work, but it doesn't learn in the way an AI-based bot does. However, such projects have very quick time to value and so are "truly as tactical as it gets".

Apart from any other considerations, legacy systems are becoming increasingly expensive to run, so organisations need to declare them end-of-life. But they need to bridge where they are to where they want to be.

"A large number of Pegasystems customers are doing robotics" and the technology is providing a pipeline of new customers, he said.

He doesn't recommend this approach for customer-facing systems. Established organisations face competition from new companies with low costs, that are "personable," and offer a good user experience (think in terms of some of the newer insurance companies). Robots don't change the experience enough, he said, so it is better to move to modern software more quickly.

People are realising that we are approaching a point where big improvements can be made quickly by replacing legacy software, Carden said. But for now, large numbers of applications have been deployed to fill the gaps in old-fashioned monolithic systems, and that provides plenty of opportunities to gain value through automation.

Robotics "has got to be part of something else", he said, "we're interested in customers who want strategic change".

Forrester has noted the way Pegasystems offers a range of business applications based on the same platform as its digital process automation suite which includes robotic process automation and other functions.

Growing awareness of machine learning will lead to increased attention being paid to data, said Adam-Gedge.

There are also organisational issues, so leadership skills are important. In particular, employees may be "culturally hesitant" about the introduction of automation, with concerns about whether such systems will eliminate jobs, and whether they will actually work in the specific circumstances.

An "HR bot" might be good for handling many routine inquiries such as questions about the annual leave policy, leaving staff to concentrate on issues around the employee experience, wellbeing and wellness.

Or a smart augmented reality system may improve the likelihood that field service staff will be able to fix faults immediately.

Carden seemed sceptical about suggestions that automation would merely free staff to do the more interesting tasks. Saving time will normally mean fewer staff, he said, unless there's a lot of work that's simply not being done at present. (Another possibility is that the improvement in productivity will lead to extra business, providing more work for the employees. But since that's unlikely to happen overnight, it seems probable that some will be retrenched and then other people hired as business picks up.)

Adam-Gedge also pointed to the way "machines are able to do things we never could do", such as using sensor data to drive predictive maintenance programmes that have the potential to save millions of dollars by extending the useful life of assets.

A recent survey of organisational leaders found that more than half of the respondents regard automation as a way of augmenting rather than replacing people, she noted.

But just because it is possible to do something, that doesn't mean you should. This is an "extraordinarily hot issue", she said. Technologists need to understand what is possible in regulatory as well as technical terms, and consider the position of stakeholders with regard to what they are trying to achieve with automation, and what is legal and ethical.

Organisations are spending more time considering such issues, said Adam-Gedge, and are "no longer just giving a set of requirements to a technologist".

Setting the right boundaries makes it possible to seek the benefits of automation while avoiding its bad side.

Continued here:

Two steps to automation - iTWire

A startup called B12 builds websites with the help of friendly robots. Human designers, client managers, and copywriters still do much of the workbut they dont coordinate it.

That job has been given to a software program called Orchestra.

As its name implies, Orchestra conducts a swarm of workers, most of whom are freelancers, and other robots to complete projects. When a client requests website improvements, which B12 sells a la carte, Orchestra generates a new Slack group, identifies team members who are both available and appropriate to complete specific tasks, and hands off work to humans and automated processes in the appropriate order. It constructs a hierarchy of workers who can check and provide feedback on each others work.

Automation is often associated with repetitive work such as torquing a bolt or combing through contracts during an audit. Orchestra and other systems like it demonstrate that the management of that work, and even work too complex to fully automate, also involves tasks with high automation potential. According to a McKinsey analysis, 25% of even a CEOs current job can be handled by robots, and 35% of management tasks can be automated.

The future of work may have become the hot topic, but the future of management may involve an equally drastic change.

Almost a decade of research on how to automate coordination and other managerial tasks has focused on managing crowds of freelancers, which with platforms like Amazons Mechanical Turk can be easily recruited from all around the world.

Employees at a company called MobileWorks (which now builds databases of sales leads and is called LeadGenius), for instance, published a paper with researchers at the University of Berkeley in 2012 describing a dynamic work routing system that automatically priced taskseverything from managing a Twitter account to digitizing stacks of business cardsand assigned them to qualified workers. Multiple workers completed the same task to help check for accuracy. If they disagreed, the task was served to other workers and, if they continued to disagree, marked for review by managers, workers who had already demonstrated high speed and accuracy. Workers who made a lot of mistakes were assigned to practice tasks until they improved.

At Stanford, a group of researchers (including Daniela Retelny, who is now B12s director of product) has published papers about how to coordinate crowds to complete projects that involve interdependent tasks, such as prototyping an app. One strategy, called flash teams, used software to automatically assemble a team of freelancers and hand tasks between them, like an assembly line. The process effectively turned napkin sketches into functional web applications and recruited users to test themall within a single day. Another called flash organizations, discussed in a paper published earlier this year, placed freelancer teams into a hierarchy and allowed members to suggest changes to the organizational structure as they worked. Those teams completed prototype designs for a card game, an app for use by EMTs, and a client training portal for use by a business services company.

B12 isnt the only company to incorporate these strategies. A startup called Gigster uses a similar system to build software and websites. Konsus, which offers business services such as data entry and PowerPoint design, has created automated workflows that hand work between its pool of freelancers and automated processes.

What all this means for the job of managing people within a company isnt necessarily straightforward. To the extent that we can build systems that aid coordination and awareness for teams performing routine tasks, that seems the most likely to reduce the need for managers, says Michael Bernstein, a Stanford researcher who is an advisor to B12 and co-authored the papers on flash teams and organizations. But to the extent that managers are providing informal and evolving coordination support, that will still be useful in my opinion.

A Bain report published in April suggested that by the end of 2027, most of a companys activity will be automated or outsourced.Teams will be self-managed, leading to a vast reduction in the number of traditional managers, the reports authors write. Employees will have no permanent bosses, but will instead have formal mentors who help guide their careers from project to project.

The report suggests new types of leadership will emerge. Rather than aiming to become a professional manager (to take expert bricklayers, so to speak, and make them managers of other bricklayers), top talent would shift to contribute directly to a companys service or product and communicate directly with each other rather than through managers (they should beguilds of bricklayers). In this new company structure, there would be multiple tracks for career advancement. Some tracks will recognize and reward the efficient management of routine processes, they write, while others, just as highly prized, will value the coaching and development of apprentices as they migrate from one role to another.

Roger Dickey, the CEO of Gigster, imagines a system that automates this type of career advancement for freelancers based on the quality of work (B12 already has some hierarchy of freelancers, as do LeadGenius and Gigster). Leaders can oversee as many as 20 projects at a time, offering guidance to their team, recommending bonuses to people who are doing well, coaching, training and jumping in when an issue is escalated, he wrote in a recent blog post on LinkedIn. Companies are then able to hire an entire team of freelancers to manage a project, knowing that there is a hierarchical structure in place to support them.

In any case, if we have truly entered a fourth industrial revolution, as the World Economic Forum recently declared, it follows that work wont be the only aspect of an organization to see sweeping changes.

Our philosophy is that anything that can be automated around these workflows will be, says Nitesh Banta, B12s co-founder and CEO. The efficiencies are too great not to automate.

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Robots are replacing managers, too - Quartz

Australia is spectacularly unprepared for automation and this time it is more dramatic than the industrial revolution.

Let's be blunt: government and corporate Australia is spectacularly unprepared for automation.

You may think that's an especially provocative statement or blazingly unfair.

But try naming a government program or corporate plan to tackle the predicted massive impact of technological change on employment?

It's not like there haven't been clear signals of what's coming.

Oxford University, the OECD and MIT have long warned of the effects of job automation. Media, industry, unions and the tech sector have said we need to act on this.

Governments commission and consume studies and tacitly accept the extent of change coming. For example, the CSIRO has come up with a national-level to-do list via its report "Tomorrow's Digitally Enabled Workforce". Released early in 2016, the CSIRO's recommendations gather dust.

Australia's business community is actively examining roles ripe for automation, but many corporates are holding back on unleashing these changes, conscious of the job impacts flowing from such decisions.

Joined up government and industry preparedness is wholly absent and there is only so long this can go on for.

Businesses must reduce costs where possible, to compete and to pass savings to demanding customers and shareholders. Embracing this change early can lead to new jobs, as new companies and industries arise. Sadly, an absence of data and insight forces a short-term focus.

Companies that defer tough decisions make hasty, ill-considered "catch-up plays" that hurt employees and likely trigger community backlash. The cumulative effect of industries and government doing this too late, too fast, and with too little data and no overarching plan will be fewer people in work, and economic and social pain for all.

But we shouldn't feel compelled to assume the worst.

Technological change isn't new. It's been a constant since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Yes, this time, things are different.

The speed of tech-driven change, globalised markets, the automation of white as well as blue-collar roles and the geographic density of work, where whole communities rely on the salaries of jobs that will be automated, make today's changes sharper and, left unaddressed, more threatening.

Automation can both remove repetitive tasks from the workplace and create new opportunities. That's why government must plan ahead and focus on education that provides training so people can make the most of those opportunities as the world of work changes.

Few people left education for the challenge of filling out forms, and tomorrow's work will demand the skills computers don't have, like creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, curiosity, communication and care.

Leaders that show they have a plan to build tomorrow's companies, for tomorrow's jobs, with tomorrow's technologies can play a huge role in calming fears about the future. However, it's crucial to build this plan in a holistic and thoughtful way, with more than fly-by-night platitudes.

The worst thing that could happen is to have faith in a "just-in-time" response to automation hoping that just shoving affected workers through a plethora of "re-training" courses will fit the bill.

The key to managing the change will rest in leadership and insight, two ingredients noticeably absent in the national landscape.

We need leadership that is equipped to see commitments through to their conclusion, and do so collaboratively, across government, industry, major agencies and peak bodies.

And leadership needs to be informed with insight. In Australia, there are those that have tried to scope out different scenarios for the future of work.

The role of government is crucial from encouraging a greater take-up of lifelong learning, supporting the emergence of new industries through to thinking about and acting upon the likely impact of automation on areas such as taxation and superannuation.

Most of all, both companies and governments need insight to build durable strategies and policies that see Australian industries and communities through this transition. This is no time for two or three-year pet projects that expire when new CEOs or new governments arrive.

Ultimately, we need the future of work in Australia to become a much more prominent part of public discussion. We must not blandly "mitigate" the effect of change, but ensure that Australians feel like they have enriching, more secure jobs in a globally relevant economy as a result of it.

Ed Husic is Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy and Future of Work and Mike Priddis is CEO and founder of Faethm, an R&D firm focused on the Applications and Implications of emerging technologies

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Australia unprepared for automation of its workforce - The Australian Financial Review

As a company that specializes in automation controls, we field a lot of different requests from clients who want a quick budgetary quote to retrofit an older piece of equipment. These requests usually come in after a piece of machinery has failed and the company has encountered one of three scenarios: 1) The company doesnt have any documentation. 2) The last person to work on this machine has retired, and no one has been trained. 3) Replacement parts have finally become too difficult to find, even on eBay. There are other reasons, of course, but most often a client is responding to some situation that has left the company exposed to a much larger downtime risk than previously thought.

I want to discuss two different prevention techniques in hopes of providing some insight for companies to consider as they wrestle with keeping equipment currentand we all do! First, dont be caught off guard with not knowing how and when a piece of equipment is likely to fail. There are several software options available today that provide performance data and maintenance scheduling, helping companies avoid unplanned downtime. Second, consider a machine retrofit as a way of preparing for tomorrows manufacturing instead of just reacting to a problem with a rush to update the machine.

Software solutions for machine monitoring have come a long way in the past five years. I dont know if it can be considered a mature market, but there are many established providers that have proven their solutions. Conveniently for users, there are several options available from complete software platforms that monitor everything from CNCs, robots, PLCs and test stands to simple offerings that are designed to provide real-time monitoring per single device. Regardless of your specific needs, be assured that you have options that can be found with some basic Google searching. To make matters easier, a lot of these software providers offer their solutions via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, which reduces the risk of overcommitting and lowers upfront costs.

All this to say that it is wise to seriously consider employing a machine monitoring software tool of some sort sooner rather than later. The advantages of doing so far outweigh the risk. Consider some of the benefits: scheduled maintenance events based on known wear, use or observed conditions; dashboard monitoring and/or reporting available via desktop computer or mobile devices; uptime and throughput reports to monitor trends; and automated alarming provides alerts that will send alert condition messages to supervisory personnel to facilitate an immediate response. With so many software solutions available provided as flexible options like SaaS, it is a good time to develop and implement a strategy that takes the guessing out of machine monitoring.

The second key aspect to keep in mind when maintaining or updating older equipment is when you evaluate a retrofit investment, consider what you can do to make that piece of machinery or that production line ready for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). In the not so distant future, experts predict whole manufacturing floors will be populated by intelligent machines that are able to monitor themselves, schedule their own maintenance and provide constant monitoring. This future state will allow machines to interoperate and create dramatic efficiencies not possible today. Machines will do this by dynamically adjusting to manufacturing conditions to ensure maximum efficiency. Although all of what is predicted is very exciting, we wont get there overnight. The clear majority of manufacturers will use a phased approach to slowly migrate equipment to Industry 4.0 requirements over the next decade, since very few companies have the luxury of starting their production strategies from scratch.

Companies can prepare for the future by utilizing their automation roadmap, or 3- to 5-year manufacturing plan, to ensure that any investment made in a machine retrofit will not only be applicable in the future, but will also be an advantage as they phase in more Industry 4.0 equipment. Learn why an automation roadmap is essential to remaining competitive. Not sure how to get started? Learn how to get started on an automation roadmap.

Here are some important things to consider with a retrofit: network compatibility, whether wired or wireless; security protocols to ensure all data is protected; virtualization (consider server consolidation and thin client architecture); and an interface that provides operators and decision-makers with valuable information to make appropriate, timely decisions.

In todays world, the information coming at us is unlimited and it can feel like we are constantly reacting to issues and scenarios. When updating or maintaining older equipment, it is crucial that we take a proactive approach. To do this, ensure you have maximum visibility into plant operations as described above and make every investment dollar count when you retrofit equipment to be fully prepared for tomorrows manufacturing.

As a final comment, integrators certified by the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA) can be an invaluable resource whether you are considering manufacturing software or creating an automation roadmap. Often, integrators have worked in a vast range of manufacturing scenarios and they can leverage that knowledge to the benefit of the client.

Michael Lindley is vice president of business development and marketing at Concept Systems Inc., a certified member of the Control System Integrators Association. See Concept Systems profile on the Industrial Automation Exchange.

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Preventing Extensive Downtime From Equipment Failure - Automation World

The US presidential election last year was a choice between two second world war acronyms: snafu (situation normal, all f***** up) and fubar (f***** up beyond all recognition).

American voters faced a choice between a candidate who personified the political status quo, and a candidate who promised the disruption of that status quo. With Hillary Clinton, there was the certainty that nothing much would change. With Donald Trump there was the chance of quite a lot of change, but the risk was that it would be change for the worse. Twelve months ago, it was dawning on me that there might just be enough voters willing to gamble on Trump, knowing full well that the outcome might be fubar.

Since Trumps election, I have tried to swim against liberal opinion. The more commentators proclaimed the advent of tyranny and the end of the republic, the more I tried to argue that the Trump administration belongs firmly in the tradition of American populism. The more journalists cried Watergate, the more I tried to show that Trump isnt Richard Nixon: with his dynastic approach and louche personality, he more closely resembles John F Kennedy.

My goal has not been to defend Trump, but rather to expose the inconsistencies of his critics. However, the time has arrived to break the bad news to those who voted for Trump.

You wanted change. You got it. But the result is a political system that I can now officially certify as fubar. This is not politics. This is fubatics.

Seven months ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan was proclaiming the opportunity of a lifetime for Republicans. Having achieved unified government control of the White House and both Houses of Congress their party was poised to enact a transformative legislative programme: repeal and replace Barack Obamas Affordable Care Act, comprehensive tax reform and a roll-back of economic regulation.

Yet,the Senate could not even agree on a skinny bill to repeal just parts of Obamacare. The same week, the Republicans abandoned all hope of passing the border adjustment tax, without which there can be no permanent cuts in corporate and income tax. As for deregulation, this was also the week when Steve Bannon, the chief presidential strategist, said he wanted to regulate Google and Facebook like public utilities.

Wait. Right now Google and Facebook are free. By contrast, I pay hundreds of dollars every month to the utilities.

Fubatics is to politics what comedy is to news. Ever since Americans began to get their politics from comedians such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the danger was that the politicians would respond by providing their scriptwriters with material for gags. We have now reached that point.

Newly appointed White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, last week told a New Yorker journalist that his colleague, chief of staff Reince Priebus, was a f****** paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac ... I want to f****** kill all the leakers and I want to get the presidents agenda on track. He took to Twitter to imply that Priebus was guilty of a felony in leaking details about his finances. By Friday, Priebus was gone. The previous weeks casualty was press secretary Sean Spicer. Next on Trumps hit list: Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Unified government? These guys are unified the way the cast of Reservoir Dogs were unified. Or maybe Goodfellas.

Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, the plan to render most Americans, and most humans, unemployed goes forward. If you dont live in northern California, you tend to assume that it will be decades before self-driving vehicles are the dominant mode of transport.

Nearly half the jobs in America are at risk of being automated over the next decade or two

Michael Gove, the British environment secretary, announced that the sale of new diesel and petrol cars would be banned in the UK by 2040 to encourage people to buy electric vehicles. This surely underestimates Tesla founder Elon Musk, not to mention the car makers chasing him in the race to bring e-cars to the mass market. Goves worries about diesel fumes remind me of The Times 1894 editorial warning that by the mid-20th century every street in London would be buried under horse manure. Despite evidence of the accelerating pace of technological change, we humans remain chronically bad at making realistic projections about our economic future. The American Trucking Association says the number of jobs for truck drivers will be 21 per cent higher in 2020 than in 2010. Yet self-driving vehicles are already on the road in several US states.

There are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the US. It is the most common job in most states. But they sit where drivers of horse-drawn carriages once were: on the brink of unemployment. Nor are they alone. Nearly half the jobs in America are at risk of being automated over the next decade or two, according to Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University. Looking at global employment, the McKinsey Global Institute has concluded that half of todays work activities could be automated by 2055, but this could happen up to 20 years earlier.

Trump voters thought it was globalisation that destroyed the good jobs in American manufacturing. In reality it was globalisation and technology. Now technology is getting ready to destroy the not-so-good jobs too.

As an economic historian, I cling to the hope that predictions of the impending redundancy of humanity, like similar predictions at earlier stages of industrialisation, will turn out to be wrong. As a reader of Dostoyevskys Notes from Underground, I also expect bloody-minded humanity to put up more of a fight against the automation of the world than Silicon Valley expects. This is why Google and Facebook are the new targets of Bannons populism.

Yet, as I watched my son play gleefully with a toy robot called Robosapien, the Action Man we gave him for Christmas forgotten, suddenly I felt a sense of kinship with that poor, discarded doll.

The goings-on in Washington are the comedy politics of a distracted age. But the more attention we give @realDonaldTrump on Twitter, the less we pay to the economic revolution all around us. The future belongs to robotics, not fubatics.

Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford

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White House comedy distracts America from the age of automation and looming job losses - South China Morning Post

Driverless semi trucks are expected to hit the road in full force as soon as 2020. While this will make the industry more efficient, the question over what happens to 3.5 million truck driving jobs remains.

We hear about the potential impacts of work place automation when it comes to trucking, manufacturing, retail and more. Right now there are 1.64 robots to every 100 employees in the U.S. and that number will likely only climb over time. Korea has 4.78 robots per 100 workers, Japan has 3.14 per 100 workers, and Germany has 2.92 per 100.

As the number of robots per worker grows, the cost of implementation for robots in the workplace will shrink. Eventually, it will become cheaper for technology to do the work that humans are currently doing.

Some of the top industries potentially impacted include:

Insurance underwriter

Farm laborer

Construction laborer

Fast food

Trucking

Mail curriers

A global average of 57 percent of jobs will be at risk to work place automation as the future grows. Its scary stuff. So the question becomes, how do we prepare for a future where jobs arent necessarily threatened by immigration, but by technological progression?

The struggle will likely be felt by millions of Americans. Strong political leadership can help smooth out the transition. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently spoke in front of the governors association, with the suggestion of legislating the upcoming artificial intelligence boom.

Its hard to look at a possible bright side when the scope of the jobs created by the automation process isnt immediately clear. There are entire industries now that revolve around technology that wasnt here 20 years ago (cell phones for example), and that trend will likely become more explosive. There will be new careers and new fields permeating the workforce as we enter into an even higher-tech world. Someone will need to make and maintain the technology used.

This list of the 21 hottest jobs of the future still holds several staples such as nurses and elementary school teachers, but it also includes software systems developers, research analysts, computer and information system managers, computer system analysts, software application developers and more. These are the fields that may be most spared by automation and also the jobs that will likely have a hand in shaping the future of the country and the world.

The people in industries most heavily impacted by automation will no doubt struggle. The more you understand about the potential risks you face now, the better. It will be a tough reality for people with 20-30 years experience in these industries.

If we do enter into a situation with millions out of work, how do we prop the economy back up? Thats where universal basic income comes into play. There are a lot of questions surrounding this debate that will need to be answered.

Will a universal basic income work?

Do we have the political will? Right now it seems the government is more interested in tackling an immigration problem.

How much would be given?

How much would it cost and who would pay for it?

What kind of exclusions would we make?

Could this lead to an explosion of creativity and entrepreneurship? Or would it kill productivity?

Can governments continue to afford this on a long term basis?

Avoiding the risk

The main factor for whether your job is at risk for automation is how routine your job is. Everyone in the American workforce will need to look at how vulnerable there industry and specific job is to automation. They might need to be looking at the emerging alternatives as well to determine how to create the most viable future for themselves.

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Photo credit: Getty Images

Matt Brennan is a marketing copywriter, occasional parenting writer, and journalist in the Chicago area. He is also the author of Write Right-Sell Now.

Read more from the original source:

How Will We Deal With Workplace Automation? - The Good Men Project (blog)

I love watching my son mastera LEGO set. Logic is the key ingredient in putting a set together, especially the super complexmodels that require many hours to assemble.

The LEGO company is smart. For the complex sets, the company breaks the whole into units, which are packaged to be built separately. The assembled sections are then added together to create the overall object.

The unit approach makes it much less overwhelming, while also making it easier to find the right pieces. It also helps kids realize success as each section is completed.

An added bonus is that the sections become a pathway to producing something different and creative. Many times my son has reused those units by putting togethermodules from a variety of sets to create something different and original,thereby expanding his enjoyment of the toy.

Marketing automation has a lot in common with building LEGOs. Complexmarketing automation campaigns designed and built unit by unit areeasier and more effective than anentire campaign implemented as a single unit.

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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LEGO logic rocks marketing automation - Marketing Land