Category Archives: Automation

In Cisco's weekly security update list, there are three critical bugs affecting its Elastic Services Controller and Ultra Services Framework.

Switchzilla warns its Elastic Services Controller (a network function virtualisation management environment) has static default credentials that would let a remote attacker log into the controller's UI.

The credentials are shared between multiple installations, meaning a miscreant could generate an admin session token that allows access to all instances of the ESC web UI.

There's also a privilege escalation bug: user tomcat has access to shell commands that lets that user overwrite any file on the system, and elevate their privilege to root.

The first bug in the Ultra Services Framework's (USF) automation service has an insecure configuration of the Apache ZooKeeper service, which again is remotely exploitable if the attacker can get at the orchestrator network.

The framework also has a bug in its staging server: a goof in shell invocations means an unauthenticated remote attacker can craft CLI command inputs to execute Linux shell commands as the root user.

There's also a credential disclosure bug in the USF's AutoVNF: it logs admin credentials in clear text, which an attacker can retrieve if they know the logfile's URL.

The same product also has a symbolic link error that exposes the system to arbitrary file read and malicious code execution.

Excerpt from:

Cisco automation code needs manual patch - The Register

In recent years, the threat of automation has loomed ever larger over firms in virtually every industry. Millions of Americans now justifiably fear being replaced by a machine or program, including nail-biting CPAs.

In 2015, PwC made headlines with a study that found accounting to be the most likely job to be automated in the coming years. Bookkeepers may find themselves in need of drastically overhauling their skillset, should they hope to remain relevant in the future.

How, then, can a CPA firm survive oncoming automation? By following these steps, you can ensure a lucrative spot for yourself in the workplace of the future, and even exploit the forthcoming revolution.

Move beyond the data

While accountants may find themselves restless with the realization that much of the number-crunching theyre responsible for can be automated, they should be looking forward to the opportunity to automate dull work so they can focus on the big picture.

A professional CPAs value stems not from his or her ability to garner and crunch large swaths of data, but rather their ability to interpret that data and draw conclusions from it. Accountants will remain pertinent to business operations only if they excel at keeping their eye on larger trends, and can offer the invaluable service of translating numbers into actionable ideas.

Automating routine task will enable the CPAs of tomorrow to become data specialist who navigate foggy areas clouded by near-infinite amounts of data. When less skilled task such as banal bookkeeping is completed using software, experts in the field of finance with a history of identifying the signal amidst the noise will still find themselves in high demand.

Prepare to exploit new industries

The rise of automation amidst the continuing information revolution brings with it a whole slew of new industries and opportunities. CPA firms that begin building the foundations of a 21st century business now will be well poised to swoop in and offer their services to new companies and customers as they arrive.

As car companies increasingly devote resources to building autonomous vehicles, for instance, the entire transportation industry is likely to change. CPAs who hope to be employed by companies likely to automate many of their own jobs should, then, familiarize themselves with that technology ahead of time.

Creating an anticipatory organization model, or developing the skills needed to foresee sudden market changes, may be one way for CPA firms to prepare themselves for coming changes. Only after an accountant has become sure of their future can he or she take steps to truly shape it.

CPA firms should become part of the process as their client companies begin making plans for an unknown future. Interpreting huge sums of data to identify changing trendlines in your clients market, for instance, will go a long way toward making your services to them invaluable. By focusing on future performances rather than past results, an accountant can remain innovative and salable to clients.

Find your accounting niche

As straightforward task become part of the realm of the robots, your marketability as an accountant will increasingly rely on your expertise in a certain niche area. Embrace the process of specializing in one aspect of your field, and focus on setting yourself apart from your competitors who will vie for what jobs remain.

Adjusting to auditing logistics of companies that have huge operations but very few human workers, for instance, will position you to thrive in a forthcoming high-demand area with a low supply of professionals.

Focusing on delivering your clients the analysis they need in real time by working closely with new programs will render your services invaluable. By focusing on one company or industry, you enable yourself to become the preeminent expert in that field.

It is critical to begin making this adjustment early. An accountant or firm that waits too long to modernize will soon find themselves left behind in the dust as their competitors snag the latest contracts and opportunities. Rather than compete with the robots, learn to adapt and work with them, expanding your capabilities and reassuring clients that youre worthy of future partnerships.

CPA firms which exploit their human potential will be those best prepared for a future defined by sudden and sporadic change. Accounts wont always be able to beat the machines, but those savvy professionals who embrace them and their capabilities will always be able to exploit them.

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How CPAs Can Survive The Automation Revolution - Accountingweb.com (blog)

Hundreds of companies are trying to disrupt the way we consume, work and move. The economy's growth potential could be higher if smart machines could turbocharge how humans go about their tasks. Higher productivity, or output per hour, would boost corporate profits and may help U.S. workers finally get a pay raise. Here's why that economic nirvana isn't happening just yet.

Vik Singh's company has powerful artificial intelligence software that helps firms hunt down the best sales leads. Getting somebody to use it well, that's a story that says a lot about the U.S. push into automation.

U.S. businesses have every incentive to adopt labor-saving technologies, replacing factory workers with robots and desk jobs with smart software. In some areas, such as finance, machine decision-making is advancing quickly. In others, there are obstacles. Overall, while the penetration of automation in the economy is happening, it is taking place at a slower pace than futurists expected.

Singh tells customers how his system can help trim sales prospecting staff and boost revenue. Managers are intrigued but sometimes reluctant to entrust a high-touch business such as sales to a black box.

"They just don't understand it," says the co-founder and chief executive officer of Infer Inc. in Mountain View, California. "And they don't believe it."

Hundreds of companies are trying to disrupt the way we consume, work, or move. The economy's growth potential could be higher if smart machines could turbocharge how humans go about their tasks. Higher productivity, or output per hour, would boost corporate profits and may help U.S. workers finally get a pay raise.

That economic nirvana just isn't happening yet.

Productivity in the U.S. rose only 1.1 percent last year, and rather than being replaced by technology, more workers are being hired. Employers have added an average of 159,000 new jobs a month so far in this expansion, compared with 99,000 in the previous upswing. Over the same period, investment in intellectual property products, such as software, has barely edged up as a share of GDP versus the last cycle.

"Low labor productivity is the biggest problem with the story," said Andrew McAfee, co-director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Initiative on the Digital Economy and co-author of "The Second Machine Age," a book about the next wave of technology. "Some of these pretty profound innovations are going to take time to diffuse."

There isn't a single story that explains why second-wave technologies are trickling rather than flooding into the economy. Bloomberg News spoke with several to find out how the pace of technological adoption is proceeding. Here are some of the themes that emerged:

Here are some of their stories:

Social Tables helps companies with event space sell it to planners who need it, while also providing collaborative tools. The Washington-based company started using Infer about three years ago after launching a mobile app that gave it about 12,000 new sales leads.

The event space and planning market is large and varied. Sorting through those leads to find potential subscribers would have been a gigantic human task, said Trevor Lynn, the chief marketing officer. The company also turns up about 3,000 new leads a month.

Social Tables had a couple of choices: Hire an expensive database engineer or many more salespeople to sift the data. Instead, they use Infer, which sorts, queries and offers up live feedback on how the leads are performing. This kind of big-data hunting and vision would be difficult for any human to replicate in real time.

"We don't need as many lead qualification folks," Lynn said. While Social Tables didn't replace anybody with Infer's software, "it definitely shapes your hiring map in the future," Lynn said.

Social Tables is the typical Infer customer a young, fast-adapting company that is looking for ways to use technology to save money and move quickly. "One less person means more decisions in a rapid manner," Lynn said.

Getting more-established companies to use the software is challenging, said Singh, who previously worked at Alphabet's Google. About 25 percent of Infer's customers have been around 10 years or more.

"The biggest bottleneck to machine learning is trust," he said. As a result, finding the "hero CEO" who will tell their shareholders they are trimming a sales team to rely on a black box is difficult. "If we can create these technologies that build trust I am very confident we will be able to leverage that in a new way," said Singh.

From baggage carousels to shifting stages at a rock concert, a motor made by SEW-Eurodrive Inc. is probably the workhorse making things move.

Some of the most efficient manufacturing of precision casing and gearing this German company produces happens in a bustling plant on Old Spartanburg Highway in Lyman, South Carolina. Eighty percent of the plant's production is exported.

In 2000, there were no robots on the factory floor. Now there is one robot for every human, most made by Japan's Fanuc Corp.

The infusion of automation into the plant didn't push out a single worker. Robots added scale. The plant will produce 500,000 components this year, up from 78,000 in 1999. Total staff is up just 6 percent, to 148 people.

The plant is so lean that the humans are having a difficult time keeping track of all that robots need and do. Call it a robot saturation point.

The next big boost in productivity is likely to come from an unexpected place digital information, managers here said.

SEW Eurodrive is looking for a system to feed data from its production machinery into a computer dashboard that gives operators a real-time look at plant performance rather than scurrying around with clipboards.

"If we can make that product a little faster without jeopardizing quality or safety, then we win," said Melvin Story, a supervisor at the plant.

If a robot is having trouble with a line of components, a human can be on the problem faster. If there is a maintenance program coming up, they can do it on time before something fails.

Melding big data with manufacturing is the next step for hundreds of companies, and it is challenging, said Bryan Tantzen, head of manufacturing and industry solutions at Cisco, the networking-technology giant.

"You have to connect these machines to transform them," he says. There are obstacles. Not all machines are loaded with sensors. Information-technology staff can be different from operational-technology staff. People responsible for robotics can view networks as insecure and unreliable.

"That OT/IT divide is a huge barrier to adoption," Tantzen said, and the infusion of new technology into manufacturing has slowed in recent years, partly due to cost-cutting.

Eventually, big data will be a reality on the plant floor, he said, because there is a constant need to push up profits and productivity. "I think it is really about to hit an inflection point and accelerate, and therefore drive productivity."

BMW's Spartanburg plant the largest BMW factory in the world by volume, sprawling over 6 million square feet is the highly-automated carmaker that technologists talk about.

The hype around robotics suggests a world where humans have little input in manufacturing. Talk to BMW managers, however, and it's all about getting the right mix of humans and machines in a world where customization and complexity are big challenges.

Almost every one of the 1,400 X-series SUVs rolling off the line here each day has been custom ordered by somebody. While about 1,600 robots weld, drill and paint auto bodies in steel cages, further down the line the cars are surrounded by humans adding this audio system or that trim. Humans are paying close attention to look, feel, smell, and even the sound of these cars to ensure BMW authenticity.

"You can build a car for months and months, and never build the same car twice," says Steve Wilson, a spokesman for BMW Spartanburg.

If there is one lesson from the team here, it's that robots move processes while humans improve them, according to Richard Morris, vice president of product integration, who has been with BMW in Spartanburg since 1993. Morris says technology is good for "transactional jobs." He adds: "There is something that we call transformation and that is something only a human can do."

"When you put automation out there you are just living in the status quo, but with people you are constantly improving the process and finding ways to make it better," Morris added. "Sometimes it is better to start with people."

Managers are constantly on the lookout for new ways to insert more automation. One recent addition: a small "co-bot," working next to humans that rolls protective foil on a door frame. Having a machine do this simple task several hundred times a day saves time and wear on human hands.

But the company's continuous improvement wall, a display where they show dozens of small refinements created by their team, doesn't feature a single robot.

"I have never been inspired to do more by a robot; I have never gotten any ideas on how to improve something on the shop floor from a robot," Morris said. "Little improvements every day add up to efficiency, and we are adding more cars and we are still hiring."

Excerpt from:

Slow march of the robots: Biggest barrier to automation is trust - The Providence Journal

Viewpoint

Robots in factories in the industrialised world are now taken for granted. Jonathan Wilkins, marketing director at obsolete equipment supplier, EU Automation, explores how robotics can also be used to create sustainable solutions and tackle world poverty.

The United Nations has reported that almost half of the worlds population lives on less than US$2 a day. On top of this, another billion people are considered to be living on less than this. Sustainable development that is, development that helps solve the problems of today without compromising the needs of future generations is an important part of decreasing the number of people living in poverty. And it is no small task.

Science and technology go hand-in-hand in solving the worlds problems and robotics and automation are the latest innovations set to tackle one of our biggest issues poverty. The number of people developing advanced technologies, such as robotics and artificial intelligence, to provide creative solutions to these real world challenges is on the rise.

Technological development relies on creative initiatives from companies, entrepreneurs and educational institutes to tackle crises. To solve these global issues, technologists also need to work with the people affected by them to understand the issues at hand. With a clear understanding of influencing factors, new technologies can be developed to tackle the problems head on.

The development of this new technology can draw on a number of innovative fields, such as big data, the internet of things (IoT), synthetic biology, 3D printing, quantum computing and drones to name a few. But it is robotics and automation which are now making waves.

In the developed world, robotics and automation are predominantly used in large scale applications, commonly in industrial settings performing tasks such as product assembly or welding. Personal robots are much less common, as many have limited functionality or are expensive. In more remote and less developed locations, low numbers of personal robots that provide a valuable service could be particularly useful in improving health or agriculture for a community.

In this environment, the robot could act not as a personal robot, but as a community robot performing specific, important functions on a small scale to benefit a group. This type of robot could increase quality of life for local people, and help develop more sustainable, healthy and safe communities. Potential functions include increasing accessibility to healthcare, performing agricultural work, checking the quality of water or solving design challenges.

The reasons a robot could benefit a community are similar to the reasons they benefit industrial environments so greatly robots are precise, strong and accurate. These characteristics can be put to use in different ways to suit a particular communitys needs. Once these have been identified, an engineer can develop a robot with the appropriate characteristics. For example, if it is particularly necessary that the community reduces waste, one solution could be the development of a robot to increase recycling by sensing the contents of different plastics using spectroscopy.

Alternatively, if there is a lack of clean water, a robot could be designed to monitor contamination. In agriculture, communities could use robots to assess soil condition, check the health of plants and animals and cultivate or harvest crops. These are just a few ways that robots could be deployed to increase the quality of life for those living in developing countries.

One company that is working with local partners to develop robotics for health and environmental applications is We Robotics. The company co-creates local innovation labs, known as Flying Labs, to help partners identify if robotics solutions may help to overcome the communitys problems. If a solution is viable, We Robotics works with technology partners to deploy technology for local applications, including transportation and data collection. Technological development using knowledge of the landscape and environment is essential as a part of this process.

Designing the community robot

Robots comprise several components to enable them to perform their specific functions, including sensors to recognise the environment, motors for actuation and systems for intelligent control. New designs can take advantage of existing components by combining these with knowledge of the specific application at hand, engineers can develop new solutions to problems.

If there are limitations to overcome, the designer must take this into account. For example, in some environments, energy may be a problem. To tackle this, a designer can combine a wind-up motor or biogas engine with an automated technology for sustainable use without access to electricity.

Robotic components can also be used in isolation or in combination with a human operator as a hybrid system. For example, using a sensor combined with a human for improved detection or a robot gripper that relies on humans senses.

In developing these robots, education is as important as collaboration. Creative local engineers that are familiar with the environment, culture and challenges can work with either academia or industry to develop the required technology. If this continues, new applications are sure to emerge that benefit communities and provide a useful function.

Robotics can contribute to challenges in developing countries, but robots need adapting to suit niche purposes. Once developed, these could be applied to help tackle the global poverty crisis, one community at a time.

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Automation for sustainable development - The Engineer

Whether taking a walk down the hall or hopping a flight to some far-flung destination, monitoring plant operations or large assets in the field has traditionally been an on-site role. Thanks to the emergence of remote access technologies, however, the need to be physically present to problem solve or monitor operations is fast becoming a thing of the past. Despite companies increasing level of comfort with remote access in general, they remain slow to expand usage into more sophisticated areas, including predictive maintenance applications enabled by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

A recent Automation World survey confirms that remote access is no longer a fledgling technology embraced by a limited number of early pioneers. Almost three quarters of survey respondents (72 percent) are employing remote access technologies to gain entre to plant equipment and data while off site. Not surprisingly, the same number of respondents have multiple plant locations, which in part explains their interest in remote access technologies as a way to keep tabs on distributed operations. Among those who have yet to implement remote access technology, 46 percent say they plan to do so; the other 54 percent, however, say their companies do not permit it.

Despite a small amount of reticence, remote access technology is not a novel application. About 40 percent of the companies responding to our survey have had remote access capabilities in place for industrial applications for longer than five years; an additional 31 percent have been using the technology for one to five years.

Overall, manufacturers are making more liberal use of remote access functionality, but usage is highly varied depending on industry, according to Matt Wells, general manager of automation software for GE Digital. Vertical market segments such as wind, water, power transmission and marine, for example, are far more likely to invest in the technology compared with traditional manufacturers, which still tend to be more plant-centric. Anyone dealing with distributed fleets has a strong demand to be able to see, manage or control it from a remote spot, he explains. It all comes down to the difficulty of accessing that remote asset.

Going mobile Increased demand for remote access is inextricably tied to the rise of mobile devices, which are now ubiquitous among operators and other plant floor personnel. The whole concept of mobility gives operators the freedom to monitor devices or collect usage data on equipment without being physically present or tethered to a specific programmable logic controller (PLC) and human-machine interface (HMI) on the plant floor.

All [remote access] solutions give operators complete situational awareness to everything thats going on with the factory floor from wherever they arethats whats picked up steam these last 18 months, says Matt Newton, director of technical marketing at Opto 22. It lets an operator virtually be present in their factory without actually having to physically be there to look at the process.

Customers operating a wind turbine farm, for example, can monitor the speeds of the turbines and the amount of electricity being produced, and even perform some basic controls like turning turbines on and off based on market pricing, Newton explains. In another example, a food manufacturer can keep tabs on a refrigeration system remotely to avoid the nightmare scenario of frozen foods melting over the weekend because there was no on-site visibility into the system. All around, the concept of connectivity is tapping into information you didnt have access to before, he says.

According to our survey, the most prevalent use case for remote access is for maintenance, repair, troubleshooting and diagnostic applications, cited by 60 percent of respondents. Production monitoring is next in line at 44 percent, and 26 percent of respondents are leveraging the technology to support manufacturing intelligence applications for plant management and executives.

Though companies are actively embracing remote access, few anticipate an expanded role for the technology any time soon, the survey found. Beyond their current use, respondents said future plans call for putting remote access to work for pretty much the same types of tasks: maintenance, repair, troubleshooting and diagnostics (36 percent); production monitoring (33 percent); and manufacturing intelligence (26 percent). About 22 percent of respondents said they are already maximizing usage of the technology.

Given the most popular applications, the primary users of remote access technologies remain plant operators, engineers and technicians, with 65 percent of respondents saying those positions are involved at their sites. Plant management was another healthy sized user with 37 percent of respondents adding them to the list, while third-party engineers (24 percent) and corporate management (22 percent) made up the rest of the user base.

For the most part, manufacturers are leveraging remote access to deliver more flexibility to personnel and save costs. Two of the primary motivators for the technology are to reduce the time and expense involved in physically deploying workers to a site for problem resolution (cited by 60 percent of survey respondents) and to reduce downtime (53 percent). Manufacturers are also tapping the technology to improve knowledge of production operations and provide better insight into equipment conditions (42 percent each).

One of the primary drivers is eliminating travel costs, says Keith Blodorn, director of the wireless program at ProSoft Technology, which provides industrial automation connectivity solutions. ProSoft Connect is a cloud-native platform designed to simplify secure remote access to automation systems. One of our customers recently had to fly out to a place thats hard to get to, and the plane ticket cost $1,500 at the last minute. They got there, plugged into the PLC, found the problem in 10 minutes, but couldnt get a return flight for three days. That showcases a tangible value for remote access.

In such cases, remote access delivers far better labor utilization, GEs Wells notes. Instead of each plant functioning as a self-sustaining entity with a dedicated staff of automation experts, manufacturers can parlay a single expert across multiple locations. In the case of extremely remote locations, remote access can substitute for dedicated experts to support unmanned operations. As cost pressures increase, local engineering staff can log in remotely and get the data they need to provide relevant advice to fix and improve things, he says.

Moreover, the ability to tap into a remote site to gain access to critical data furnishes manufacturers with a larger data set for analyzing plant performance. With remote access and the ability to bring data up into a centralized data store, you gain greater insight into whats working well and whats not and can start to identify things that arent obvious in a single plant, but that you can see in the context of multiple plants, Wells says. GE Digitals Predix platform is built around the whole framework of remote connectivity, he adds, with analysis and optimization applications built on top, including those assembled into its asset performance management (APM) suite.

Though 34 percent of survey respondents are building their own remote access systemsprimarily web access to SCADA and HMI systemsa growing number (41 percent) are leveraging outside suppliers like GE Digital and others as they integrate expanded remote access capabilities into their product suites. In terms of top suppliers of remote access technologies, Rockwell Automation was the dominant vendor cited by survey respondents with 25 percent, followed by Siemens (18 percent), Schneider Electric (13 percent), ABB (11 percent), Honeywell (9 percent), GE Digital (8 percent) and a long list of others.

Next stop: IIoT-enabled predictive maintenance The bulk of survey respondents have yet to put IIoT-enabled predictive maintenance applications on their dockets. But automation providers are expanding their portfolios in this area nonetheless, anticipating plenty of future demand. Beckhoff Automation, for example, recently released its ultra compact C6015 industrial PC, specifically geared for remote access applications. Emerson Automation Solutions DeltaV Mobile app allows process engineers and plant operators and managers to receive real-time alarm notifications and remotely monitor their processes from wherever they are located.

Moving forward, companies like Rockwell and GE Digital will lead manufacturers into predictive maintenance applications by leveraging remote access capabilities along with predictive analytics tools and IIoT platforms. Most companies starting down that path have high-impact assets that put a manufacturer at significant risk due to downtime, notes Umair Masud, Rockwells product manager for consulting and security services.

If someone has a large compressor or rotating machinery and that asset is critical to the environment, they are absolutely invested in understanding the ways in which they can predict failure, Masud explains. Failure in any one of those areas can have a large monetary impact from a downtime or environmental perspective. In contrast, less complex environments like a food and beverage plant, for example, typically have redundancy built into their production lines, so predictive maintenance might not be as business critical, he adds.

Whether its IIoT-enabled predictive maintenance or more traditional remote access applications for production monitoring and support, security remains the most significant concern and primary roadblock for expanding remote access applications. You are playing with fire when you connect this stuff, says Opto 22s Newton. If youre connecting multimillion-dollar equipment to the Internet, its going to take a lot of educationits still a totally foreign concept to many.

Link:

Remote Access: Widespread but Still Evolving - Automation World

When it comes to internal service management, the key to a fast and seamless process lies with automation tools. By tradition, IT departments have tended to be the pioneers, using new technology to create tickets and filter employee service requests through automated systems that lead to quickly resolved issues. As IT teams have evolved from primarily handling break-fix tickets to implementing service catalogs that facilitate a wide range of services, the push for internal automation is amplifying throughout the entire organization.

The modern customer support experience within consumer-facing markets has also become increasingly immediate and comprehensive across a number of communication platforms. These shifts have put increased pressure on organizations to treat employees like customers. And what department has the most employee interaction? Thats right, HR.

Be it managing requests for medical plans or approved time off, its not uncommon for HR departments to require several days before responding. With expectations for on-demand everything, its important for HR departments to keep up with employees service requests. Using automation tools, HR processes can be simplified to ease the burden on HR practitioners and improve turnaround times on approvals and services, ensuring employee needs are met quickly and efficiently.

Many departments track service requests manually through spreadsheets and emails, or using a basic ticket management system. HR departments should consider implementing a service catalog that enables automation of processes, for seamless onboarding and request management throughout the company. Aside from IT teams, human resource departments bear the brunt of service requests that filter through organizations. This makes automation even more vital to providing efficiency in service management.

Service requests are constantly evolving, and their nature shifts with every little change in an organization. Whether it's a request to IT for a device or software for a new hire, a list of documents that need to be signed as a part of onboarding or a 401k enrollment request, HR leaders face a growing list of demands that require timely attention.

Automation is great for workflows that require a high number of approvals and steps. For example, onboarding a new employee, no matter the company, involves several steps from a wide range of departments. These steps include setting up the new hire with payroll by accounting, getting the right devices and software installments to the new employee from IT and everything in between.

HR leaders facilitate the onboarding process, and it can be grueling to manage each aspect of these services, especially given that HR should be modeling business processes and tracking all activities in a way that ensures accuracy and compliance. By automating onboarding procedures, human resources teams can ensure each step of the process is completed and approved.

There are a range of cloud-based service platforms out there that significantly simplify different business operations be it by outsourcing tasks or subscribing to tailored services. As companies increasingly adopt cloud solutions, automation tools are very valuable in enabling speed and scalability. Its up to the HR department to decide if it wants to start small or go big. For example, perhaps moving training to a cloud service makes more sense to start off with, rather than beginning with the entire salary system. Automation is an incremental process and the cloud can be a critical part of that equation.

Rather than deploying HR-specific automation tools, universal solutions can help streamline processes between employees and management, but also between departments. Through a single service portal dashboard, employees can request flights and travel, order a new ID card, submit time-off requests and more. With the proper tools in place, employees can create their own direct service requests, cutting down the workflow time and eliminating the middlemen. Top solutions can streamline service management, keeping requests for IT, HR and other departments in a central location.

Automating HR service delivery via a service catalog can help to ensure that HR activities are modeling business processes. A service catalog describes not only each service and its attributes, but its objectives. This intelligence can help to ensure that the services offered are closely aligned with critical business strategies, and can contribute to the achievement of key corporate goals. Once the service catalog has been set up to ensure business processes are being modeled and compliance needs are met, automation can be introduced to make service delivery easier.

Collaboration cant begin until there is a strong understanding of processes and operations across departments. From there, organizations can create a tailored solution that seamlessly integrates from department to department, as well as employee to employee.

Through a better understanding of how requests and services are managed throughout a business, leaders can set up tools that are tailored to fit the companys unique needs. For human resources, automation is the next step, following the standards set by todays IT departments. Offering employees a consistent and easy method for submitting service requests, and then fulfilling those requests efficiently, will put businesses ahead of competition by maintaining a workplace where employees are happier and are provided the resources they need to do their best work.

Editor's Note: This is a guest contribution from Steve Stover, VP of Product at Samanage

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Where to start with automation tools in HR - HR Dive

Guitar manufacturing is an industry known for its intricate, hand-made production processes. But even in such industries, automation is increasingly playing a role for a number of reasonsfrom alleviating workers ergonomic issues to improving quality and aiding materials inspection.

I was recently invited by Tyler Robertson, robotics engineer at Taylor Guitars in El Cajon, Calif., to see how automation is increasingly being used within the companys handwork-intensive production operations. He explained that, at the El Cajon facility, Taylor Guitars currently produces around 100 guitars a day. At the companys Tecate, Mexico, facility, some 600 guitars are produced each day[TR1].

Robertson came to Taylor Guitars a little over two years ago based on his experience as an application engineer experienced in robotics programming and robot software integration at In-House Solutions in Canada. Before working at Taylor Guitars, Robertson developed custom robot programs for complex processes in the plastics, aerospace and fabrication industries. He developed expertise in these industries working with robot end users, integrators and OEMs for job shop welding, laser and water jet cutting, and robotic machining, finishing and drilling applications.

Robertson was keen to discuss how Taylor Guitars has been using automation technologies for well over a decade now and how he is being challenged to expand the use of automation at the company to further improve the production processes and quality of Taylor Guitars already world-renowned products.

The Wood My tour of Taylor Guitars production operations started as you might expectin the wood receiving area. Common wood types used by Taylor Guitars include ebony, mahogany, rosewood, cedar and spruce. All inspections of the wood before processing are performed by hand because of fluctuations in materials.

To automate this inspection process would be a nightmare, Robertson said, not only because of differences in the woods, but also the differences between and within in each batch of wood. Getting the lighting correct for robotic vision inspection of wood, due these differences, is very difficult and inefficient. Ive looked into x-ray, ultrasound and CT scanning methods, but these are either not well-developed for wood scanning or are very expensive and geared more toward the lumber industry.

Despite the difficulties in automating wood inspection, there are other steps in initial wood processing that could be more automated, Robertson said, as he pointed out multiple pallets of wood stacked nearly to the ceiling. We get 2,000 blocks of wood in each day for the manufacture of guitar necks and heads. These blocks of wood are stacked and inventoried by hand, he said.

When it comes to tasks like this, Robertson said workers at Taylor Guitar are very open to the idea of automation. In fact, while Robertson guided me through this portion of the tour, a manager in the department approached him with suggestions for automation.

As often as such automation discussions occur with workers around the company, Robertson noted that automation is still in its infancy here and he is the only full-time staff person focused on automation in addition to his work providing tech support for production. Theres lots of opportunity for automation here, he said. The challenge is prioritization and focus on the projects that can deliver the clearest benefits first.

Like most manufacturers today, Taylor Guitars faces what Robertson referred to as the ticking clock issue of increasing numbers of pending retirements. Taylor Guitar is known for having little turnover among its staff; and having been in operation since 1974, a wave of pending retirements loom for the company. This is troubling for Robertson in an environment where it is not simple to automate many of the tasks due to the high degree of material variances.

Beyond retirement issues, another example of the need for Robertsons investigation into automating the critical wood inspection and classification processes at Taylor Guitars is highlighted by the personal circumstances of a key Taylor employee in this department. Though this employee is not retiring any time soon, she is leaving the company because she is getting married and moving away.

Finding people who want to work at Taylor Guitars is not difficult, Robertson said, but finding experienced people is not easy and getting them up to speed on our processes takes time.

Describing one of the projects he is starting that involves automating the inspection of neck blanks and ebony fingerboards, Robertson pointed out that its not just the workforce timing issue he faces, but also the typical return on investment issues. While such challenges are common, Robertson noted that he has the benefit of what he called the Bob factor, as in Bob Taylor, the owner of Taylor Guitars. Bob may give the green light for a project based on his experience and ability to recognize the production benefits it would bring regardless of any projected return, Robertson said.

Tracking Guitars One aspect of automation that is a critical part of the production process at Taylor Guitars is the tracking of each guitar as it moves through production by means of an RFID chip placed on each guitar topwhich is among the first guitar components made in Taylor Guitars production process.

No information is stored on the RFID chip, Robertson said, but it creates a digital thread for us that allows each guitar to be tracked throughout production. If problems arise at any point, we can follow this digital thread to determine the source of the problem.

Highlighting an example of the effectiveness of the digital thread, Robertson described a time when the company was experiencing issues with guitar finishes. Using the digital thread created by tracking the RFID chip through production, they were able to trace the problem back to the sanding process.

Robertson added that having this digital thread in place also helps the company comply with environmental and regulatory requirements.

The Necks We then moved into the guitar neck milling area of the plant where several 20+-year-old Fadal CNC machines carve the necks out of wood blocks. Were starting to feel the pain with these older CNC machines as they age, Robertson said, noting that its not just maintenance issues, but data collection. I want to have a SCADA system hooked into these machines to help track and monitor resource management, he said.

Looking across racks of recently glued head stocks and necks in this area of the plant, Robertson explained there are a lots of process considerations when it comes to automating and/or speeding up guitar production. By this he meant that what may make sense to automate and move through quickly from a process point of view may not make sense for the materials. For example, we have to let the wood rest after gluing before moving it on to the next assembly step to make sure it reacts correctly.

Clarifying the importance of wood-working knowledge in Taylor Guitars business over automation technology knowledge, Robertson noted: I have a degree in systems engineering, but my boss is a cabinet maker.

This reality is underscored in the guitar body production department where Robertson pointed out that nothing in this department is a focus for automation. The only possible exception to this rule would be in bringing in a robot for some sanding applications to address worker ergonomics.

To alleviate ergonomic issues in this intensive hand-working area, Robertson said that workers here move around constantly to perform different duties. This part of the process could be done in an assembly line fashion, he said, but by moving workers around it avoids repetitive stress injuries and keeps workers interest high.

One area where automation technologies do play a part in this segment of the guitar production process is bending wood to form guitar sides. Robertson said that all of the companys side benders are made in house and use Automation Direct DirectLogic DL06 and DL105 PLCs and Groschopp dc gear motors.

The use of automation is key here because each type of wood has a different bending recipe, Robertson said. He explained that these recipes direct the application of different pressures and temperatures.

Robertson also pointed out the Epilog laser cutting system in this department that is used to cut wood used for the guitars internal bracinga key component of a guitars signature sound. Robertson created a touch screen for this machine to ease the brace-cutting process for workers. Previously, the workers had to look up and enter precise codes into the machine to cut bracing to correct specifications for the various types of guitars. The touch screen he created simplifies the selection process by allowing workers to tap an area of the screen identified by the guitar model for which they are creating the bracing. Once this selection has been made, the proper codes are automatically loaded and the worker only needs to place wood blanks into machine for laser cutting to specifications.

Pickups The three most automated parts of Taylor Guitars production processes are assembly of the piezo pickups, spraying of the polyurethane finishes on the guitars and buffing of the guitars finish.

Assembly of the companys ES2 piezo pickups begins with a vibratory feeder that feeds the pickups crystals onto a conveyor where a Cognex 7010 camera determines the polarity of crystals. These two-sided crystals have a silver (positive polarity) side and a bronze (negative polarity) side. Crystals fed onto the conveyor bronze side up are re-routed through the feeder so that they are all silver side up before being picked by an Epson G3 robot.

In total, three Cognex cameras are used in the pickup assembly process, Robertson saidone to determine polarity of each crystals exposed side via a color sensor camera, another to verify quality of the assembly process, i.e., correct placement of the three crystals into the pickups foil, and assessing final assembly of the pickup.

As the crystals are being selected for correct polarity, a worker puts foil down in the pickup molds. The paper backing on the pickup foil is peeled off and discarded by custom Taylor tooling, after which the Epson robot places insulation on the foil and then installs the printed circuit board (PCB). The first robot which picked the crystals off the conveyor then places the crystals into the slots on the pickup assembly. Once the crystals and PCB are in place, the assembly is folded and a second Epson G3 robot brings the assembly to a foil wrapping station.

Another important aspect of the pickup assembly process is the use of Keyence LR-T sensors to detect presence or absence of parts in pickup assembly.

Finishing The use of a robot to apply a urethane finish to the guitars electrostatically began in the early 2000s, Robertson said. The system for this spray robot application was designed in a joint project between Taylor Guitars and Pinnacle Technologies (a robotics system integrator firm). The system includes an ABB IRB 2400 robot and Rockwell Automation MicroLogix PLCs.

A consistent spray pattern is repeatedly achieved on the various guitars produced here by having the robot move the guitar parts under a stationary sprayer. Having a fixed sprayer and moving the guitars under it achieves a better finish, Robertson said, than by fixing the sprayer to a robot arm and having it move around the guitar part.

My rule of thumb, said Robertson, is if the tool is heavier than the part, its better to move the part than the tool.

Buffing Early this year, the company upgraded its robotic buffing system. Robertson noted that this was one of the first areas ever automated at Taylor Guitars because of the intense ergonomic issues involved in having workers position guitars against high-speed rotating buffers.

The previous buffing system handled 80-85 percent of the buffing process, with the new system handling 95-98 percent of the process. Final finishing, Robertson stressed, is still done by hand.

Like the robotic spraying system for guitar finish application, the robotic buffing system is another joint Taylor Guitars/Pinnacle project which uses an ABB IRB 4600 robot and Rockwell Automation CompactLogix PLCs and Kinetix drives. The Allen-Bradley motors, inverters and PLCs handle compensation of the buffing wheels, said Robertson, which is key to maintaining the correct pressure of the buffing wheels against the guitars.

The ABB robot programs in the buffing system were initially programmed via a root teach pendant. Robertson said he then refined these programs in MasterCam to fine-tune robot movements based on each guitars CAD models. It takes about a week to prove out the process for each guitar type, he said.

Balluff RFID readers in the buffing area are used for digital thread tracking. Though these RFID readers are only used for tracking now, Robertson said he plans to use them to trigger programs in the Allen-Bradley controls to initiate the proper buffing program for the associated guitar.

The robotic buffing system previously used by Taylor Guitar before this years upgrade has been re-purposed by ABB for use in the companys Tecate factory where buffing is still done by hand. This will be their introduction to using robots in the Tecate factory, Robertson said.

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Finding the Fit for Automation - Automation World

AUTONOMOUS trucks are here. Today. The technology is highly developed, mature and sophisticated.

But autonomous trucks are not coming onto our roads and highways any time soon, not in any numbers to cause driver unemployment or to change the landscape of road transport.

While the technology has been developed far beyond the needs to drive a truck, think military attack drones with precision missile deployment working in a three-dimensional space globally, the needs to start, stop, steer, and generally manage a truck are comparatively simple.

The Volvo group's Sweden based guru on automation, Hayder Wokil, will not be drawn on a year or a timeline for widespread introduction on public roads.

He sees many hoops yet needed to be jumped through, both political and technological.

Not the least of these potential problems, Mr Wokil agrees, is the likelihood of hacking the current systems in spite of the use of high levels of encryption.

An aggressive hacker could, today, stop the entire freight task of a nation if it was relying on autonomous trucks, or in our current global environment of fear, hack a truck and use it as a terrorist weapon.

I asked Hayder Wokil if there was an answer to protect society from the dangers of hacking.

"No, not at present. But we will, he said, not prepared to put any date onto the technical evolution.

Volvo is a large company whose core marketing values, perceived and in reality, are based on safety. This is a reasonable set of conservative eyes to look at the development of automation in road transport.

To paint a wider picture of the development of autonomous trucks, Mr Wokil explained the five levels of automation.

From a basis of no computerised management of a truck, the levels start to build and we are already partway along this path.

The society of automotive engineers international (SAE) developed these levels in 2014.

Level 1: This level introduces automated assistance on acceleration, deceleration and braking with a human operator monitoring the road and maintaining steering control.

This system is with us today in many sophisticated trucks with adaptive cruise control (ACC) where a truck will indicate road or lane wandering and take autonomous action if a collision is about to occur not noticed by the driver.

Level 2: This level brings the introduction of partial automation where driving software handles all steering, braking and acceleration tasks. All the collision avoidance technology of Level 1 is included. The driver sits at the wheel and is responsible for monitoring the truck, watching traffic and responding to system prompts.

Level 3: Called conditional automation, all steering, braking and navigation tasks are controlled by software however the driver remains at the seat but will be allowed to follow other pursuits, ready to resume control when instructed by the system.

Level 4: This level is described as high automation, where the automated system controls all operational and tactical decisions related to driving assuming good weather and traffic conditions. A driver is in the truck but does not have to be in the driver's seat.

Level 5: Full automation will handle all driving tasks, including failsafe manoeuvres under any traffic or weather conditions. No driver will be required, this is a fully autonomous truck.

At the moment Hayder Wokil says "Level 3 and beyond do not fit with our safety image and safety thinking at present because if the driver does not resume control of the truck, the vehicle could be running uncontrolled.

Yet Level 5 is here technologically and is being used in non-public road situations such as mine sites where the working environment is totally owned by a company and the trucks do not interact in any public landscape.

Platooning, a slightly hybrid version of these levels is being pushed by the Europeans. Much work is being done on this where a lead truck would have a driver probably in a Level 2 or Level 3 with two, three, or four other driverless trucks following closely linked electronically.

"We have already got that system in Australia, I said. "It's called a road train.

If we have the technology now, what are the hurdles stopping the introduction of autonomous trucks to the highways of the world.

And let's face it, they are being introduced on specialised roads and specialised tasks, with manufacturers, both European and North American, making it clear that this is the direction of truck manufacture.

The main hurdles according to Hayder Wokil are broader technological challenges such as introducing technological redundancy that can overdrive and combat any efforts to attack the management network through hacking or other breakdowns.

Secondly it is political will in the various countries, with an expectation that there will be a public resistance to the introduction of driverless trucks and it may take some time.

Possibly even a generation, to get that acceptance, like the introduction of genetically modified grains is a comparative example.

Whatever happens, most development work will be carried out in confined areas near Gothenburg in Sweden but Australia is seen as a major trialling and testing area as driverless trucks develop their wings.

"Australia is one of the test areas. You have tough conditions of roads, from the weather and the heat and the dust so that will give us a lot of input for our product development department for when we introduce a new feature or a new system.

"We have the infrastructure for testing here, the knowledge so with the testing we are on the edge of breaking new ideas coming with automation, Hayder said.

I suggested 2030 as an introductory date for driverless trucks in Australian line haul.

The Volvo man would not be drawn, but taking what he told me into context, I think we can expect autonomous trucks to be working in specialised applications very soon, as they are already in some mine sites, but as an accepted part of our national road transport task, widespread introduction is still a fair way distant beyond the horizon of the future.

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The five stages of automation - Big Rigs

I recently taught a graduate school banking class where, at its conclusion, a student said, I just want to thank you for not being an alarmist. But that comment puzzled me since most of my subject matter was about the rapid change in the industry.

In fact, in scores of speeches in recent years, I have worried that I might be putting off some folks with my preaching about the need to re-evaluate strategies and practices. My mantra to banker groups has been, Evolution does not mean elimination. Failing to evolve, however, guarantees elimination.

I inquired with the student why he thought I was not alarmist. He said he has felt immersed in doom-and-gloom talk about the banking industry. It seems like some people believe that the key to success in banking is to get rid of just about all of our branches and most of our bankers.

He added that he appreciated hearing a message about bankers continuing to be at the center of the industry that banking will still be about relationships and working with communities regardless of the technology banks are using.

His statement crystallized a thought in my mind. Much of the fear our teams experience amid the predictions of bankings future derives from not understanding how (or for that matter, if) they will be a part of that future.

There have been fervent predictions for years that branches and branch jobs would not be long for this world. Most have been wrong, but there have been modest reductions in both in recent years.

One thing to bear in mind is that a nontrivial portion of branch closures (by larger banks) are attributed not to banks trying to do more with less, but realizing that they need personnel and real estate to make a branch strategy work. These banks exited markets where they had a relatively small branch presence and therefore less ability to operate an effective network. It can be argued that many closures were actually acknowledgment of the need for robust branch networks.

Meanwhile, stories of increasing automation in other industries also contribute to the tensions felt by some of our branch managers and front-line bankers.

An example was McDonalds stock hitting an all-time high recently after announcing an aggressive rollout of automated ordering kiosks to replace many cashiers.

Shortly after that news, I was asked if the McDonalds story was more evidence that technology will replace front-line employees in most businesses, including banks. I suggested that it is definitely likely there will be fewer folks with the title of cashier. It is probable that McDonalds will need fewer total employees per restaurant to produce the output they provide now.

But I added this caveat: McDonalds kiosks will not be preparing the food, serving the food, keeping the restaurant clean or managing the teams. Kiosks will also not be resolving ordering mistakes or stepping out to assist a customer needing help. Kiosks will not be assisting with childrens birthday parties at McDonalds or chatting with the regular morning coffee crowds. Kiosks will not smile and thank customers.

What kiosks will do is turn over a few of the most basic tasks in a fast-food restaurant to customers. For easily understood and frequently repeated tasks, self-service technology may actually produce improved customer satisfaction.

Nevertheless, we will not be looking at employee-less operations in these restaurants. The business will still rely on competent teams of multitasking individuals in each store.

No, I do not believe that fast-food restaurants and bank branches are an apples-to-apples comparison. However, whether it is bank branches, restaurants, airport ticketing areas, Amazon-influenced grocery stores, or any number of businesses, talented and engaged employees will remain integral to their success.

I frequently suggest to managers of all levels that if they intend to lead their banks in the future, they need to lead their bankers into it. Our better employees are not as concerned about future staffing models needing fewer personnel as they are in knowing that there will be critical new or modified roles for them to fill.

Your best employees know and accept that evolution is inevitable. When you help them see that the future success of their bank will still rely on core groups of good people, they will be far more likely to remain engaged in building and fulfilling whatever new and improved business models you implement.

Dave Martin is a consultant specializing in retail banking strategies, including in-store branches. He is the founder of the retail bank performance company bankmechanics.

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Message to branch staff: Don't fear automation | American Banker - American Banker (subscription)

We are walking down the strip in Las Vegas in the year 2035.

The lights are glaringly flashing, music is pounding your ears, the usual nine Elvis look-alikes try to pose with you for a few dollars. A few robots are crisscrossing between the legs of passersby, offering ticket services, information and to be their guide. Self-driving vehicles bring gamblers from casino to casino. A robot group performs a break dance, and you can compete against Robo-MJ in basketball.

Vegas is still Vegas, so nothing has really changed. Or has it?

Maybe it wont be visible to the eye, but robots may have taken the place where people currently toil to keep the Vegas machine humming. About 65% of all jobs in Vegas are susceptible to automation by 2035 a bigger share than in any other part of the country. Across the U.S., 55% (or more) of jobs in almost all metropolitan areas face this same scenario.

Who will be at risk? How many jobs will be lost by then? And what will life look like?

Scientists are heatedly debating whether robots and artificial intelligence (AI) will appear as colossally in our lives as some studies predict. Will we really see mass adoption of robots and AI gadgets?

The reality is both technologies already have seen mass adoption and it is foolish not to expect it to accelerate. Every smartphone already is essentially an AI device, and 1.5 billion of those were shipped in 2016. Some 1.6 million industrial robots operated worldwide in 2015, a total thats expected to increase to 2.6 million by 2019.

Research shows that if all these 1 million additional robots worldwide are merely as productive as those that already exist, each robot would on average replace the work done by 5.7 U.S. workers, or 5.7 million workers in all.

More worrisome is that if robot adoption continued to grow at the same pace beyond 2019, about 18 million industrial robots would be installed worldwide in 2035 and would perform the work equivalent to about 100 million U.S. workers. Put another way, this robotic workforce would be capable of producing the equivalent of the current manufacturing output on the entire planet.

Then there is the robotic invasion of the service sector, where most Americans work. Machines have already displaced service workers over the last few decades (think ATMs and self-checkout stations in grocery stores), but added intelligence allows machines now to take on tasks from room cleaning to radiology.

How quickly this transition can happen can most easily be seen in household services, where robots can substitute for hired services. In 2015, 3.7 million household robots were sold worldwide and that is expected to jump to almost 31 million annually by 2019. At growth rates after 2019 similar to those we currently see in industrial robots, we can expect annual sales of about 220 million units in 2035.

Right now, these robots mow lawns and clean carpets. They serve food and mix drinks in bars; by 2019 they will perform X-ray analysis with higher accuracy than the average radiologist can provide.

What could they be doing by 2035? Almost everything routine, including highly paid tasks such as routine surgery, regional economic analysis, and flying commercial airplanes.

So the key to understanding what may happen to Vegas and the rest of the U.S. service sector is that the recent advances in robotics and AI make those technologies continuously more affordable. Additionally, hardware in many AI applications is less costly than entire robots. Self-driving cars and trucks dont need much more than added intelligence, and similarly for vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers.

More than 90% of U.S. workers are in a service job, ranging from cashiers to surgeons. Given the expected high speed of this transformation, it will be a gigantic challenge for the economy to create additional or entirely new jobs at the same pace as robots can replace existing jobs.

What will Vegas look like when you drive down the Strip in 2035? Most of the automatable jobs wont be in the streets, but in restaurants, offices and retail stores. Some 54% of all automatable jobs in Vegas belong to food preparation and serving, office and sales occupations. Where the robots will really make a difference is mostly in jobs at the lower end of the pay scale. But thats not going to last.

However, not all jobs that can be automated will be automated. It is hard to imagine a high-end jewelry store or designer boutique without sales clerks or a gourmet restaurant without waiters. However, not only will their back offices be staffed more thinly but their sales strategies will likely also change. Foot and even full-body scanners are already available to find the perfect size for shoes and clothes, which can speed up the sales process. And why not have them made to order right on the spot from a machine? Point of sales and point-of-use production are just around the corner.

Whether we all will be able to benefit from this brave new world will depend on our ability to bring education and lifelong learning specifically to those at the highest risk of automation. Those with less than a high-school diploma face a six times higher risk losing their job to a robot than those with a doctorate, such as a Ph.D. or MD.

Given the uneven distribution of education and jobs across racial and ethnic groups, hispanics are 25% and African-Americans 13% more at risk to lose their job to automation than whites. Twice as many women than men work in occupations that are at an especially high risk of automation, such as tellers and cashiers.

Our political leaders are remarkably silent about this issue, despite its explosive potential for the labor market and beyond. By comparison, the historical effects of trade policies are mere ripples on the water. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which the U.S. can scale education and job creation as quickly as international competition for the robotics market can scale the production of robots and AI devices.

And this prospect sends cold shivers down our spines.

Jess Chen is a research fellow at the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis at the University of Redlands and leads the Institutes research efforts on the effect of automation in the workplace. Johannes Moenius is a professor of global business and the director of the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis at the University of Redlands. He holds the William R. and S. Sue Johnson Chair of Spatial Economic Analysis and Regional Planning.

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Opinion: Two-thirds of jobs in this city could be automated by 2035 - MarketWatch