Category Archives: Automation

New technologies are transforming our profession, and theyre also transforming the skills well need to stave off extinction.

In a paper titled The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation? University of Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne tried to gauge the odds that certain occupations will be completely automated within the next 20 years. Among their predictions:

In fact, only seven occupationscargo and freight agents, watch repairers, insurance underwriters, mathematical technicians, hand sewers, title examiners, and telemarketersfared worse in the study than tax preparers.

The researchers admit that these estimates are rough and likely to be wrong, writes National Public Radios Quoctrung Bui. But consider this a snapshot of what some smart people think the future might look like. If it says your job will likely be replaced by a machine, youve been warned.

Other studies offer similar predictions:

One way or anothercomplete automation or partialour jobs are about to change. This type of disruption is coming. In one notable example, in fact, it has already arrived.

Perhaps the biggest disruption bearing down on the CPA profession is coming from IBM Watson, a cognitive learning system that is capable of answering questions asked in natural language. From health care and education to law and finance to food preparation and satellite imagery, Watson is redefining how work gets done in stunning ways.

Heres what:

This stuff isnt science fiction anymore. Its here and its impacting our profession as we speak.

How will CPAs react? Will they scramble to keep up, as usual? Or will they work to position themselves to move beyond that disruption and create future-focused value for their clients?

If theyre smart, theyll do the latterand that means learning the new skills theyll need to remain relevant in an age of automation.

Numerous studies conducted over the past several years are nearly unanimous: Going forward, CPAs must become proficient at skills that have little to do with the professions traditional data-driven core. These skills include the following:

The most important skill of all, though, might also be the most ambiguous. Its anticipationthe ability to identify future trends early and position your organization and your clients to take advantage of those trends before they arrive. Renowned futurist and New York Times best-selling author Daniel Burrus calls it the key missing competency in business today.

He might be right. A 2014 report from The Sleeter Group found that the most often-cited reason why small and midsized businesses leave their CPA firms is because those firms provide reactive advice instead of proactive services. In essence, clients say they leave because their CPAs arent future-ready enough.

It seems the age of automation has also given birth to the age of anticipation. The good news is this: Were starting to see more and more resources being developed specifically to deliver these types of competencies for accounting and finance professionals.

One is Burruss own Anticipatory Organization. The Business Learning Institute worked with Burrus to create a version of his Anticipatory Organization learning platform specifically for accounting and finance professionals. Thats available now and is becoming extremely popular among CPAs throughout the country.

Another is IBMs Big Data University. Its an online curriculum designed to help accounting and finance professionals learn key skills in artificial intelligence, big data, and cognitive computingskills that will be huge differentiators going forward, and will help CPAs play a bigger role in guiding digital transformation within their organizations. The Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute have entered into an exclusive partnership with IBM to deliver these skills to accounting and finance professionals throughout the world.

As this age of automation progresses, accounting and finance professionals would be wise to ask themselves a few key questions:

What can I become quite good at thats really difficult for a computer to do one day soon? Seth Godin writes. How can I become so resilient, so human and such a linchpin that shifts in technology wont be able to catch up? It was always important, but now its urgent.

Put another way, to paraphrase Fast Company Editor Robert Safian, the most important skill going forward will be the ability to learn new skills.

The learning must begin now.

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Why Lifelong Learning is Our Competitive Advantage in the Automation Age - Accountingweb.com

BENGALURU: Mid-tier IT firm Mindtree says that the company has taken a more humane approach in its roadmap for automation by upskilling and reskilling its workforce, but the larger concern will be to find skilled professionals to fill new jobs.

Say there are five jobs that are lost (due to automation), but there are 10 more roles that are created. Preparing our students for the new roles is the challenge, said KM Madhusudhan, CTO, Mindtree. The bigger concern to me is lesser job creation and not job loss, he said.

Indian IT is currently going through a whirlwind because of rapid technological change with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Insecurity due to job losses of experienced employees has plagued the market fuelling concerns over new age technologies siphoning off traditional jobs. According to some estimates, the top four Indian IT services companies may let go 12,000 -15,000 employees in the coming months. Nasscom president R Chandrashekhar has pointed out that in the outsourcing industry 50-60% requirement will be new-age skills.

Companies are in fact, witnessing the early stages of new roles being created. For instance, technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are increasingly being adopted by many enterprises for multiple business processes.

We have been working on VR/AR solutions. Though the mainstream adoption of AR/VR might not happen in the next three years, there are new roles like avatar designer a skilled professional who can create new avatars in virtual reality being created, Madhusudhan said.

The Bengaluru-based IT company prides itself on being born digital with close to 40% of their revenues coming from new generation technologies like cloud, automation, etc. or in business speak SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud).

To tackle the problem of old jobs turning obsolete, Mindtree has developed a curriculum to find adjacent skills to the jobs that are fast eroding. For every competency and job portfolio, we are identifying adjacent skills and are defining the entire upskilling and reskilling roadmap for every role, Madhusudhan said.

For example, the job of an infrastructure engineer who monitors servers and runs codes when the server goes down is now being automated. The next level of adjacent skills for that person is writing scripts. So, we teach him scripting skills since the person may not have an engineering background to know code.

The software company counts the likes of Microsoft and US-based American International Group (AIG) amongst its top clients and employs close to 16,623 employees with a net addition of 320 people in the quarter ended march 2017. In the last three months alone 4,774 have completed certified courses in Mindtrees reskilling platform Yorbit. The skilling platform introduced in July 2016 has trained 10,463 at a project ready level covering 481skills from basic vocational training to high-end skills like Hadoop, data Science, ML, AI etc.

Sometimes this reskilling happens just in time before starting a new project. Say we are starting a new project which we need 10 skills out of which we only have six, then we train employees on the four new skills and then deploy them on project, Madhusudhan said, adding they have partnered with Coursera, Udemy, Simplilearn amongst others to support the skilling programme. While the strides to reskill employees are happening on one side, the company has been focused on leveraging automation. Eight months ago, Mindtree developed its in-house automation platform CAPE which has gained a lot of traction.

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Mindtree finds humane fix to automation - Economic Times

On Monday, at HPE Discover 2017 in Las Vegas, HPE introduced updates to its OneView software that could make it a more useful tool for DevOps practitioners. Announcements included improved infrastructure automation, container support, and new partner integrations.

For those unfamiliar, OneView is a "software-defined intelligence that automates complex tasks," which could help simplify lifecycle operations, speed app delivery, and improve DevOps delivery on certain HPE products, according to an HPE press release.

Improved automation means that OneView will get a boost in its ability to manage infrastructure and firmware, the release said, which could help to lower lifecycle management costs. OneView will support HPE Synergy, ProLiant BL, DL and ML, HPE Apollo, and HPE Superdome X servers, the release said.

SEE: HPE partners with Docker on hybrid infrastructure play

For container support, Docker will now be available bundled with HPE Synergy and HPE Pointnext, with automatic storage provisioning and additional tools that will make it possible to run Docker Enterprise Edition, the release said.

HPE Synergy, the firm's modular composable infrastructure system, is getting a Mesosphere integration as well, allowing for automated Mesosphere Enterprise DC/OS deployments on HPE infrastructure, the release said. A new strategic alliance between HPE and Mesosphere was also announced, to provide customers with a more effective way of leveraging containers and the cloud.

Troubleshooting on HPE OneView is also being made easier with a new ServiceNow integration, while a Densify.com integration will use predictive analytics to help IT more intelligently place and manage workloads. According to the release, Red Hat OpenShift is also integrating with HPE OneView to automate container provisioning and boost app delivery as well.

HPE also noted that the firm was working on a Redfish toolkit for OneView, that would make it easier for customers to use Redfish without as much scripting. Additional tools will make it simpler to deploy and manage HPE hardware on a Cisco ACI network.

Finally, four months after acquiring SimpliVity, HPE is offering an HPE SimpliVity hyperconferged solution on the HPE Proliant DL380, guaranteeing "90% data efficiency and an under a minute back up restore," the release said.

Image: iStockphoto/Natali_Mis

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HPE updates OneView with new automation features and DevOps integrations - TechRepublic

The highest performing organizations have automated 72 percent of all configuration management processes. And those same high performers spend much less time (28 percent) in manual configuration processes that stall innovation and deployments.

In comparison, low performers are spending almost half of their time (46 percent) on manual configuration. These are among the findings of the latest State of DevOps Report by Puppet Labs, which surveyed 3,200 respondents from organizations of all sizes and across multiple industries.

For the first time, the report also considered leadership types and how they affect performance. The results show that high-performing teams have leaders with the strongest behaviors across five characteristics. These include vision, inspirational communication, intellectual stimulation, supportive leadership and personal recognition. Leaders that exhibit a lower percentage of these characteristics tend to have lower performing teams.

Lean product management practices come under the spotlight too, and the report concludes that they help teams ship features that customers want, more frequently. This faster delivery cycle lets teams experiment, creating a feedback loop with customers, ultimately benefiting the entire organization.

"Every company relies on software to make its business more powerful, forcing IT organizations to evolve and ship software on demand," says Nigel Kersten, chief technical strategist at Puppet. "The results of the 2017 State of DevOps Report show that high-performing IT teams are deploying more frequently and recovering faster than ever before, yet the automation gap between high and low performing teams continues to grow. The report will help organizations understand how to identify their own inhibitors and embrace change on their DevOps journey."

You can find out more in the full report which is available to download from the Puppet website.

Photo Credit: anathomy/Shutterstock

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DevOps automation boosts performance - BetaNews

This Axios headline is problematic: Summers: Automation is the middle class worst enemy.

The accompanying piece doesnt actually quote economist Larry Summers making that declaration. Rather it summarizes an interview in which Summers indeed points out the challenge automation poses for workers. Hes right. Of course thats been the case for the past 200 years and will likely be the case for the next 200. But in exchange for a degree of instability and disruption, technological progress has dramatically raised living standards for workers.

Technicians build LEAP engines for jetliners at a new, highly automated General Electric (GE) factory in Lafayette, Indiana, on March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Alwyn Scott.

Automation is kind of like alcohol, which, as Homer Simpson putsit,is the cause of, and solution to, all of lifes problems. Its the job of policymakers to make sure workers are ready to climb to the next footholdor ledge as the waters of automation continue to rise. Its also their job to make sure policy is as supportive as possible of innovation. Indeed, we need more tech progress, not less. The U.S. economy currently suffers not from too much automation, but rather from too little investment in the sort of technology that would raise the countrys lackluster productivity, writesDerek Thompson in an excellent new piece at the Atlantic.

Technology will erase jobs but also create them. Unfortunately, as Kevin Kelly writes, we cant see those jobs from here because we cant yet see the machines and technologies that will make them.

The piece also includes this chart, which shows lower US labor force participation than other advanced economies:

But I doubt whether Summers blames automation vs. the lack of USpolicies that center-left economists see as supporting workers, such as paid leave, and high USincarceration rates. And here is economist David Autor on the net impact of automation on jobs this century:

A final observation is that while much contemporary economic pessimism attributes the labor market woes of the past decade to the adverse impacts of computerization, I remain skeptical of this inference. Clearly, computerization has shaped the structure of occupational change and the evolution of skill demands. But it is harder to see the channel through which computerization could have dramatically reduced labor demand after 1999. My suspicion is that the deceleration of the U.S. labor market after 2000, and further after 2007, is more closely associated with two other macroeconomic events. A first is the bursting of the dot-com bubble, followed by the collapse of the housing market and the ensuing financial crisis, both of which curtailed investment and innovative activity. A second is the employment dislocations in the U.S. labor market brought about by rapid globalization, particularly the sharp rise of import penetration from China following its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.

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Is automation really the worst enemy of the US middle class? - American Enterprise Institute

Legislators should be more upfront with constituents about the fate of their jobs, according to California Sen.Kamala Harris.

People are feeling a sense of distrust of authority, of institutions, of their government, she said at the Code Conference hosted by Recode in California. Lawmakers need to be clear about how automation like driverless cars will eliminate jobs.

The jobs that employed large numbers of people around driving something on wheels will not exist, be it a truck, be it a UPS driver or a postal worker or a cab driver," she said. "We have to speak truth about that."

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Harris called for members of Congress to be transparent about the future of coal-mining jobs. Even if they prioritize the coal industry over other renewable energy sources to preserve jobs, were going to automate that even if were going to keep coal mines open," she said.

Widespread automation is inevitable, Harris said.

We need to have a better plan for Americas workforce that transitions them into the 21st-[century] economy, including high-skilled technology or renewable energy jobs, she said.

Harris also urged lawmakers and senior officials to meet with immigrants before drafting bills and executive orders restricting their entry into the United States. President Donald Trump issued an executive order tasking the Homeland Security Department with reforming the H-1B visa program, which allows domestic businesses to hire foreign workers instead of citizens or residents for certain high-skilled jobs. Trumps White House, along with lawmakers including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have advocated for reducing the number of H-1B visas assigned.

As home to one of the nations largest population of immigrants, California has an outsize stake in the outcome of this conversation, Harris said. Yet, many legislators do not have any experience with this population and they also seem[to] have just forgotten the history of our country," she said.

Too often lawmakers often the public a false choice, she said. The inference is, those people are taking your jobs so were going to build a wall and cut off H-1B visas.' And because those people have taken your jobs, by virtue of sealing them off, were now going to give them back to you.

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Lawmaker: 'We Need to Speak the Truth' About Automation - Nextgov

Cisco is a software company. Surprised? Dont be. In this series well explore APIs, tools and techniques that developers are using to add collaboration, security, network priority, and more!

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In 1994 and 1995 it was Boyz II Men,Pulp Fiction, and the TV showFriends. I was working as a network technical support engineer, and my team had two key accounts for which we were on the hook, 24x7. One was a large financial institution, and the other was a big healthcare organization. Both kept us very busy all the time. Looking back, and thinking about where we are now, I wish I knew how to do some of the network automation available today. Our lives could have been so much easier. Whats cool is you can start learning about network automation and coding today if you havent already. And that will put you way ahead of the game.

In 1995, like most everyone, we configured switches and routers by using a terminal emulator on a PC, connected via the console cable. 96, 8, 1 and None right?! For the financial institution, we had an interesting situation where we had outsourced on-site visits to a 3rdparty provider, which didnt know how to do configuration. They were strictly rack and stack. So I wrote some software. We created a little kit that would connect a laptop to the router in question and pull the configuration files off of it. Then, after the tech replaced the hardware, they could then push those configurations onto the new box. The technology included some simple scripts, an FTP server on the PC, and both Ethernet and console connections. This enabled people to swap a router who didnt know how to configure it. It was a pretty big deal at the time.

Figure 1 - 1995 Network Automation

Fast-forward about 20 years and, as we all know, things have changed. In todays world, there are still people doing manual, line-by-line configuration. But a lot of people are using the latest tools to automate not only configuration generation, but also to change them automatically, based on network conditions. Further, replacing a hardware device, and then having the new hardware behave like the old, is easier than ever. Even so, some folks are still not sold on network automation for one reason or another. While its still somewhat true that you cant automate everything, things are changing fast, and I think its time to take another look if you havent done so in a while.

So Im going to point out a couple of things that might be interesting, and then provide links to some more information that will help you get going if youve been hesitating about network automation. First, a little disclosure. I do work for Cisco, and these will be examples using Cisco software and hardware. That said, you can download the Cisco SDN Controller, APIC-EM,for free. And you can try out the things we talk about here without owning Cisco hardware. Keep reading and Ill explain how.

Given that Im trying to convince you to try out network automation, heres the best place to start: Plug and Play (PnP). Imagine my use case above from 1995 using PnP. In that case, youd simply rip out the old device, plug in the new one, and it would configure itself. OK, Im over-simplifying, but its actually a lot easier than you might think. Adam Radford, a Cisco distinguished engineer, has written an entire series on PnP, starting off with the basics and going further and deeper over eight individual blogs. If youre even thinking about jumping into network automation, check out Adams PnP blog series on ourDNA Community of Interest page.Heres the first one.

If youre looking for something a little more advanced, heres another surprise for you. With the release of Ciscos IOS-XE version 16.5, you can write and run Python scripts right on the box. Yes, the Cisco router that box. One of the easy examples you could start with are the learning labs on ourDevNet Beginner Track. Thats where you could actually learn to have network events trigger spark bots!

Another way to learn more about this is to read a blog by Hank Preston, a technical leader in Ciscos DevNet group.You can find his blog here. What I find particularly exciting is that you dont actually have to own Cisco gear in order to start learning to use Python for network automation.DevNet has a page on Python!

If youre not sure where to start and you just want to dip your foot in to check it out a little, then you might want to exploreNetwork Programmability for Network Engineers.

If youve been wondering about network automation and/or network programmability, its time to take a look. If you took a look a year ago and didnt think it was mature, maybe its time for another look. Network automation is changing monthly. You wont be wasting your time if you take a look at it from time to time. And Ciscos developer community is the place to do it.

If you would like to talk about this, you can direct message me@coggerin

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Network Automation Confessions of a Support Engineer - InfoWorld

Whether youve embraced digital manufacturing or are wondering where to start, there are things you can do right now to move closer to the future. Manufacturing execution systems (MESs), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) gateways, Industry 4.0, factory information systems (FISs) and manufacturing analytics might sound daunting, but that world is becoming simpler and more affordable all the time.

No matter where you are in this process, you probably know more than you think you do. Three key steps can help get you where you want to go: 1) envision the future, 2) know your pain, and 3) enlist your suppliers.

1. Envision the future

It sounds obvious, but no matter where you are in digital data management, it pays to keep an updated inventory of your data sources and uses to support your vision of the future.

Even if youre in the early stages of digitalization, start by thinking more comprehensively about where your data resides and what youd ultimately like it to do for you. For example, are you expecting your customers to start asking for traceability data in the future? Consider questions that your customers will want answered about their traceable parts or products. For example, they might want to ask questions about specific process data on a specific part assembly. Youll be asking different questions internally, such as those focused on machine-to-machine or shift-to-shift process variability.

By identifying ahead of time those questions that your tracking system will need to answer, youre creating a requirements list for traceable parts and processes. Catalog the ability of your parts, machines and processes to provide data to answer those questions, and use the resulting gap analysis to guide your next steps.

Do you rely heavily on the knowledge of experienced operators who will be retiring soon? Start to capture that knowledge now with interviews, photos, even video. At a minimum, youll have training for new employees, but even better, youll have the raw material for automated work instructions and digital error-proofing.

Dont worry about the degree of automation you have in place today. Checklists on clipboards can move to tablets, and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) arent a prerequisite anymore. Regardless of your datas source or capture method, this data collection and inventory process will help guide your future manufacturing software and communications decisions.

Consider future staffing. If youre further along, and youve got a combination of manual and automated data collection, be careful not to lock yourself into a path that could limit your options in the future. Do you plan to expand your in-house operations technology (OT) and IT staff? If so, consider having them first build specifications to use in a standard MES toolbox solution.

If youre not planning to have staff thats dedicated to one particular type of MES toolbox, you should keep your sights set on systems with a more open architecture, or look for options that focus on the applications you care about most.

Is cloud an option? If youre firmly established in digital manufacturing, consider where you could move to cloud hosting. If youre going to need to consolidate data from multiple systems and locations, youll want to consider the cloud because it provides better phased integration and centralized control. Were doing it for our customers now, and its more secure and less expensive than you might expect.

2. Know your pain

If youre ready to move forward with any kind of digitization or manufacturing system, its tempting to look at software first because there are so many options. Instead, I recommend you start by identifying whats costing you the most pain in terms of unplanned downtime, product recalls or assembly errors.

Here are the solutions that our customers usually prioritize:

Tracking and traceability: Tracks every relevant part, process and final product to quickly isolate defects. Helps to stop from adding value to defective work in process, and limits the impact of recalls.

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)/FIS: Process data, like throughput tracking, bottlenecks and starved stations, equipment health monitoring and maintenance alerts.

Automated work instructions: Gives consistent assembly information to operators, usually with a graphical interface tied to the sequence of operations. This is especially valuable for complex assembly and repair processes.

Error-proofing systems: Gated processes for part placement, torque verifications and more. These can be integrated with automated work instructions and traceability.

Once youve envisioned your future data structure and prioritized your pain points, start investigating software options.

If youre new to digital manufacturing, or are integrating machines, lines or plants, ask for the ability to have anything to anything communications, including API calls and MQTT communications. Insist on a supplier who understands IIoT. Keep your options open for future technologies.

If you already have a significant MES investment, youll probably want to stick with your current supplier and integrators who have experience working with your form of MES. A good MES integrator will know how to work within your expanding system to integrate multiple control architectures and communication networks.

3. Enlist your suppliers

Digital tools can empower traditional partnerships, and your suppliers can and should be part of your move toward Industry 4.0. It can start with something as simple as adding barcodes to their packaging or parts. Even if all youre doing is scanning them on arrival and storing the information in an Excel spreadsheet, thats data that can one day become part of a traceability record, line replenishment schedule or error proofing gate.

One of our customers is currently integrating supplier data into their serial number generation process, so theyll both have the same tracking number for a given part. If one of the suppliers parts is found to be faulty, both the supplier and the customer will be able to quickly isolate the defects.

Part and product identifiers are being used in applications beyond traceability as well. Physical markings can support proper part positioning, barcodes can be used to load work instructions and trigger quality assurance gates, and RFID tags can follow the complete lifecycle of a complex product.

For example, our dynamic test systems group uses an RFID tag on helicopter transmissions to identify the individual transmission and its repair history. The transmissions unique test profile is linked to the test stands on which it ran, and maintains a trackable record for all of its future incidents and repairs.

You know more than you think you do

I started out by saying you probably know more than you think you do, and I hope Ive convinced you. No matter where you are in terms of data capture and analysis, there are things you can do right now to move closer to Industry 4.0.

Greg Giles,ggiles@redviking.com, is an executive director ofmanufacturing execution systems (MES) and ArgonautforRedViking. RedViking is a member of theControl System Integrators Association (CSIA). Visit RedVikings profile onThe Industrial Exchange.

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3 Steps Toward Industry 4.0 - Automation World

"Adaptation has to become a more active part of the discussion," said Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist Washington think tank. "One thing is to recognize adaptation is not a question of defeat. Adaptation is the reality that is already taking place."

To be clear, in many areas of the U.S. and around the world, government and business leaders are considering or already pursuing policies to prepare for a warmer planet, particularly higher sea levels and more extreme storms. Many examples exist, and here are three:

These efforts are taking a backseat to America's obsession with the binary fight over whether or not to curb greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels. Judging by the reaction to Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris deal, one would think it was the only answer to solving climate change. But actually, nothing and nobody can solve climate change. Even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, "many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries," according to the United Nations.

This isn't to suggest abandoning efforts to slow the worst impacts of climate change. It should be an "and" proposition, not "either/or." Countries, companies and others should keep developing technologies and policies to use more renewable energy, nuclear power and cleaner burning fossil-fuel resources. The debate between whether to focus on stopping climate change versus adapting to it has persisted for years within the wonky climate policy world. It's suddenly relevant to more people now with Trump cutting the U.S. out of the Paris deal and deflating hopes of comprehensive global action to curb emissions.

Talking about adapting to climate change is easier said than done (and it's not even easy to talk about). That's for a few reasons:

Grumet and Coequyt both say talking more about adapting to climate change will help provide people with more information about an issue that's otherwise hard to grasp on an individual level. "Talking about adaptation helps people understand in a more tangible manner why we need to address this problem," Coequyt said.

One last ironic thing: A golf course in Ireland owned by one of Trump's companies applied for a sea wall application and specifically cited the consequences of global warming, Politico reported last year in a highly cited article. Proof, at least, that the president's willing to engage in activities to address climate change even if he isn't willing to admit it's a problem.

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Why Japan is encouraging automation - Axios

Jonathan Wilkins explains the new job roles automation is creating within engineering and manufacturing

Before we even knew the extent to which technology could change our lives, Albert Einstein said: "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."

Despite Einstein's worries, technology has improved quality of life for most people and has created new and more skilled jobs for those working in the engineering trade.

Since 2008 in the UK alone, 800,000 jobs have been lost to automation since 2001, largely within the administrative, retail and low-skilled manufacturing sectors.

Despite these losses, automation has created 3.5 million jobs in the same time period, allowing many workers to move into higher skilled positions.

As new technologies are used, job roles and skill sets evolve. Considering this, which job roles can we expect to emerge in the coming years?

Chief cybercrime officer

Sage, Three Mobile and Seagate were among the most well-documented cyber breaches in 2016. These incidents, along with hundreds more, prompted UK Parliament to recommend that companies appoint an officer responsible for protecting online systems from attack.

Necessary technologies such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) can increase the chance of a cyber-attack, resulting in plant downtime.

Within manufacturing, it is not just IT systems that are at risk of a cyber breach. Industry 4.0 has resulted in increased connectivity between plant systems, meaning every piece of machinery connects to a central IT system. If this system is attacked, hackers have access to the entire production line.

Industrial software engineer

35% of engineering job listings across industries now require applicants familiar with 3D printing and additive manufacturing processes.

Software developers are in high demand, due to the increase in 3D printing technologies.

There is not yet a standard user interface for 3D printing devices, meaning that adoption of the technology is currently limited to those with a technical background.

Manufacturers rely on in-house software developers to create a suitable interface. The job role is the perfect example of what happens when a skilled person embraces the coalescence of engineering and IT.

Obsolescence manager

In the manufacturing, automotive and aerospace sectors in particular, we can expect to see a greater reliance on the role of the obsolescence manager.

Obsolescence managers are tasked with monitoring product obsolescence and the state of automated systems. This involves regular audits, analysing the components of critical systems and using predictive analytics to estimate the likelihood of equipment breakdown.

Effective obsolescence management is a full-time job, especially in the world of Industry 4.0 and smart factories, where obsolescence cycles are becoming shorter and new technology is being adopted quickly.

In the case of old and obsolete parts, obsolescence managers might find it difficult to identify and source a replacement quickly. At EU Automation, we source hundreds of thousands of industrial automation parts every year for clients around the world, ensuring production lines stay operating.

Another of Einstein's famous quotes is, "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Thanks to industrial automation, the manufacturing industry is growing and thriving. As with everything new, automation brings fresh challenges for companies but, not accepting the need for change will be detrimental, while embracing industrial automation will allow businesses to flourish.

Jonathan Wilkins is marketing director of obsolete industrial parts supplier, EU Automation.

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In the hands of industrial automation - Engineer Live