Category Archives: Automation

HollySys Automation Technologies' (HOLI) CEO Baiqing Shao on Q3 2017 Results - Earnings Call Transcript Seeking Alpha Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the HollySys Automation Technologies Fiscal Year 2017, the Third Quarter Ended on March 31, 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There ... Hollysys Automation (HOLI) Misses Q3 EPS by 9c, Miss on RevenuesStreetInsider.com Hollysys Automation Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ:HOLI) reported ...Market Exclusive Hollysys Automation Technologies Ltd (HOLI) Releases Earnings Results, Misses Expectations By $0.06 EPSSports Perspectives The Cerbat Gem -Post Analyst all 20 news articles »

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HollySys Automation Technologies' (HOLI) CEO Baiqing Shao on Q3 2017 Results - Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha

Automate or perish. That is essentially what a new study by BMC Software, an IT solutions for the digital enterprise company, is saying. It polled IT decision makers for its new report and came to the conclusion that almost three quarters (73 percent) agree with the above-mentioned statement.

ITDMs believe that those organizations which fail to adapt automation within the next five years will cease to exist in 10. More than nine in ten (92 percent) said that demands for new sources of revenue, unique competitive advantage, and operational excellence are creating "enormous pressure to compete digitally" to earn the trust of employees, partners and, finally, customers.

In the next two years, containerization, workload automation and DevOps are the three top areas of investments, the report added.

"As companies continue to incorporate hybrid cloud capabilities across the digital enterprise, they are challenged by the complexity of managing workloads across on premises, public and private clouds," says Gur Steif, president, digital business automation at BMC. "IT teams must be able to manage the customer value chain in spite of decentralized usage of cloud services. This is requiring a new level of IT automation to adapt to the challenges posed by increasingly diverse infrastructure, disparate data, and accelerated applications --the critical components of digital business."

Almost nine in 10 (89 percent) think automation must be used in "new ways," to achieve corporate goals. Short budgets, lack of skills, and not enough time, are the biggest obstacles standing in their way.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Future plc Publication. All rights reserved.

Photo Credit: Wright Studio/Shutterstock

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Enterprises that don't embrace automation will cease to exist - BetaNews

Gov. Terry McAuliffe has announced a new office that will help position the state as a national leader in what is a growing multi-billion industry.

With the influx of automated processes, devices and eventually vehicles making their way into the marketplace, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has given the automation industry more influence over state government through the creation ofa new officecalled the Autonomous Systems Center of Excellence.Rac

In an announcement Thursday,McAuliffe said the centerwillexpandthe automation industry in the state. The governor spoke atXponential, an autonomous technology conference in Dallas, Texas, where the Association for Unmanned Vehicle System International brought together interests from throughout the industry, wherehe shared his vision for how automation will shape the state's future.

The autonomous systems industry is one of the cornerstones of the new Virginia economy, McAuliffe said. ...We will send a clear message that Virginia is open for unmanned systems business. Over the past three years, weve made tremendous progress to support this emerging industry, and well continue our efforts to cut redtape and open the door for further growth.

While the governors release did not specificallymention self-driving vehicles, its probable that the office designed to be a clearinghouse and coordination point for autonomous technology programs could play arole in assisting the auto industry and regulators in bringing autonomous vehicles to consumers. The state also noted the center's role as an "ombudsman"charged with representing the public's interests as the technology evolves.

State officials made theirintentions clear to aggressively pursue national leadership on self-driving vehicles.Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne has saidsaying that the state has deliberately avoided preemptive regulation and is passinglegislation to foregoany bureaucratic limitations that would hinder innovation in the space.

McAuliffe isnt alone in his ambitions. Governors throughout the U.S. have gone out of their way to court the self-drivingvehicle industry. Despite the state's tangle of regulations, California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed specific legislation to clear the way for self-driving vehicle testing. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has signed similar legislation, while states like Michigan havegiven the green light to pursue testing on all public roads in an attempt toadvance research more quickly.

McAuliffe'soffice reports that Virginia has already seen growth in the automation industry througha 2013partnershipwith the Federal Aviation Administration to create a test site for unmanned aerial drones. The states participation and investment in the sector is a bid to take advantage on what it estimates will grow toan $82 billion industry by 2025.

Secretary of Technology Karen Jackson said the center will be operated through Virginias Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), and made possiblefollowing recommendations from the Commonwealths Unmanned Systems Commission.

Virginia has already established itself as a leader in the autonomous systems industry, Jackson said in a press release. I am pleased that CIT will be taking on this role. In order for the commonwealth to continue to grow in this arena, it is essential that we create an epicenter that drives collaboration, facilitates information sharing, and provides streamlined access to all of our world-class assets.

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Racing toward automation: Virginia unveils unmanned systems office - StateScoop (registration)

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Personality Traits May Be Best Defense Against Automation | Digital ... - Digital Trends

TheSkift Corporate Travel Innovation Reportis ourweekly newsletter focused on the future of corporate travel, the big fault lines of disruption for travel managers and buyers, the innovations emerging from the sector, and the changing business traveler habits that are upending how corporate travel is packaged, bought, and sold.

Last week we weighed in on the corporate travel buzzwords were sick of hearing, even if many in corporate travel think they represent the transformative change the industry needs.

This week, were thinking about a whitepaper from Euromonitor tracing the global race toward greater automation. Automation is already driving costs down for business travelers and enabling travel management companies to get smarter about travel spend and customer service.

Compared with other industries, the travel industry is well-placed to benefit from the new wave of automation, considering that service requires a high level of management, expertise and stakeholder interaction, concludes the report. The biggest sectors to be affected by automation will be service jobs at airports and hotels, but the promise of automation has already hit behind the scenes in corporate travel.

As business travel continues to increase across the world, particularly in Asia, automated tools will only become more important to managing and controlling the experience of travelers.

Andrew Sheivachman, Skift

I think my business travel is getting to me because I had a dream I was dozing off on a plane and I woke up and I was on a plane. @Thx4SharingJerk

Automation Is Poised to Further Disrupt Business Travel:The forces disrupting business travel today are varied, but industry leaders should keep one thing in mind: The needs of travelers must stay a top priority.Read more at Skift

New J.D. Power Survey Says Airlines Passenger Satisfaction Is at All-time High:The past six weeks have been disastrous for the U.S. airline industry. But that doesnt make this survey wrong. For most passengers (yes, even those in coach) flying in North America is much better than it was a decade ago.Read more at Skift

Corporate Payments Are Getting Even More Complicated:Fluctuations in currency price and new technology areadding complexity to the payments arena, particularly in the UK.Read more at Buying Business Travel

U.S. Senators Criticize Airline Customer Service in Committee Hearing: Earlier this week, a House of Representatives Committee interrogated airline executives about service failures. On Thursday, a Senate committee also weighed in. But will Congress take meaningful action? Dont bet on it.Read more at Skift

U.S. May Expand Airline Electronics Restriction Beyond Middle East:If implemented, this will be a disaster for airlines and their customers. Its one thing to have a ban on relatively few flights from the Middle East. But an expanded ban would be a much bigger deal. Its possible a sizable number of customers could skip travel rather than deal with a ban.Read more at Skift

Why Meetings Within Meetings Matter for Large Events:The purposeful creation of meetings within meetings is important for the continued vitality of large meetings because it offers attendees focused discussions and connections in intimate settings.Read more at Skift

Amazon Echo Hears a Challenge From Google in Voice-Powered Travel Search:Despite the hype, neither the Amazon Echo nor the Google Home is delivering the goods yet for voice-command travel research. Googles effort has the most promise, though.Read more at Skift

Travel Tech Startup Accelerators Learn From Early Missteps and Adjust Course:More than a dozen travel startup incubators and accelerators, backed by some of travels best-known companies, have popped up in the past few years. The early word, which is hardly surprising, is that picking startup winners and helping them sign deals isnt just plug-and-play.Read more at Skift

Priceline Group Lags Airbnb in Alternative Accommodations But Its in Hot Pursuit: Booking.com grew its vacation rental supply at a hyper clip, 51 percent in the first quarter. But vacation rentals are different than hotels, where the company has excelled, and the same formula might not be a slam dunk.Read more at Skift

COMMENTS

Skift editors Hannah Sampson[[emailprotected]] and Andrew Sheivachman [[emailprotected]] curate the Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report. Skift emails thenewsletter every Thursday.

Subscribe to Skifts Free Corporate Travel Innovation Report

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Photo Credit: Automation is expected to surge across corporate travel in the future. Automated ticketing machines used by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines

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The Power of Automation Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report - Skift

Low-wage cities such as Las Vegas, Orlando, and El Paso will be hit the hardest by job automation, according to a recent report from the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis (ISEA). And the impact of automation on job losses is likely to be more severe than previously predicted, the report stated: Due to advances in machine learning and mobile robotics, jobs such as truck driving, healthcare diagnostics, and education are more likely to be affected.

"The replacement of jobs by machines has been happening continuously since the Industrial Revolution, but it's expected to significantly accelerate in the coming 10 or 20 years," said Johannes Moenius, founding director of ISEA, in a press release. "Pretty much everyone will be affected, but some metropolitan areas will see a lot more jobs vanish than others."

ISEA examined Oxford University research on the probability of automation for a number of occupations, as well as employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of the 100 metropolitan areas in the US with more than 250,000 people employed, the following 10 cities have the largest share of jobs that may become automated:

Image: ISEA

1. Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV

65.2% of jobs automatable

2. El Paso, TX

63.9% of jobs automatable

3. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA

62.6% of jobs automatable

4. Greensboro-High Point, NC

62.5% of jobs automatable

SEE: Future jobs: How humans and robots will complement each other

5. North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL

62.4% of jobs automatable

6. Bakersfield, CA

62.4% of jobs automatable

7. Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL

61.8% of jobs automatable

8. Fresno, CA

61.5% of jobs automatable

9. Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin, SC

61.3% of jobs automatable

10. Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN

61.3% of jobs automatable

Almost all large metropolitan areas in the US could lose more than 55% of their current jobs due to automation, the report stated. High-tech hubs such as Silicon Valley and Boston are least likely to be affected.

SEE: Video: Panera's automation investment is actually creating jobs

At-risk occupations include office and administrative support occupations, food preparation and serving related occupations, and sales and related occupations. These three categories account for half of the automation potential in the largest metro areas. Meanwhile, transportation and material moving positions contribute to potential employment losses in Riverside, Louisville, and Greensboro.

However, the probability of automation does not equal future unemployment rates, said ISEA faculty fellow and report co-author Jess Chen. A recent report from Forrester Research estimated that automation and robotics will displace 24.7 million US jobs by 2027but that the technology will create 14.9 million new jobs in the same time period, leading to a net loss of 9.8 million jobs.

"Technical feasibility does not imply that automation necessarily makes economic sense. And historically, automation went hand in hand with new job creation both in skilled and less skilled labor," Chen said in the release. "However, the speed and the high share of automation in less skilled jobs raises many questions about whether the economy will be able to make up for the expected job losses. What we do expect is that automation will create winners and losers among cities and regions of the U.S., where losers may not recover to their original employment levels within even a decade's time."

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These 10 cities will lose the most jobs to automation - TechRepublic - TechRepublic

More than seven in 10 executives and professionals believe that if they don't automate a good part of their IT operations soon, their businesses will not survive the decade.

That's the key takeaway of a new survey of 654 IT executives and professionals by BMC Software. Business process automation has been proliferating across enterprises for years now, but the pressure is on for IT shops to automate themselves as well. With the rise of digital business, and the artificial intelligence, analytics, real-time capabilities it requires, things are getting too complex for the manual procedures still seen in many IT development and operations.

Along these lines, containerization is the top investment priority for IT executives and professionals over the next 24 months. would like to invest in are containerization, workload automation/scheduling and DevOps, the survey shows.

Interest is running high in DevOps, or the embedded, institutionalized cooperation and coordination between those writing the software and those deploying it into production. DevOps has gained traction across most enterprises, the survey shows. One-third employ DevOps across most their teams, and 24 percent report it's an end-to-end endeavor. Only 19% indicate they either don't use DevOps at this time or are unaware of it.

Issues hindering coordination between IT and their business counterparts include conflicting objectives between business units (42 percent) and 33 percent say there is a "lack of motivation" among business units. Budget and skills issues hamper the digitization efforts of half of the enterprises involved.

Just about everybody, 94 percent of IT decision makers, agree that within the next three years, IT automation will have spread to other areas of the business, "transforming everything." Fifty percent of IT executives say digital transformation is their biggest item on their agendas, and 45 percent say just about every part of their business is involved.

IT leaders are confident that IT automation will help fulfill the challenges of building and running a digital enterprise. The study found that 88 percent of IT decision makers feel they are empowered to deliver the required IT innovation to drive digital business transformation and bridge this gap, and 77 percent of respondents believe that businesses are doing enough to prepare and train the workforce with greater automation skills.

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Containers, DevOps, IT automation seen as antidotes to complexity - ZDNet

Dive Brief:

More than 70% of respondents to a new survey from BMC Software believe businesses that do not embrace IT automation to achieve digital business goals within the next five years will no longer be around in 10 years.

The study also found 92% of respondents agree that demands for new sources of revenue create a unique competitive advantage and operational excellence has created huge pressure to compete digitally. BMC surveyed more than 650 IT decision makers across 12 countries for the report.

By 2020, 94% of IT decision makers expect automation to spread from IT departments into all areas of business. The top three areas of investment priority in the next two years are containerization,workload automation/scheduling and DevOps.

Automation has become a must have for companies instead of a nice to have.For example, as companies increasingly use hybrid cloud capabilities, IT environments become more complex. To manage that complexity effectively and achieve digital business objectives, businesses will need to automate.

Many think that only through IT automation will companies have the time and bandwidth to focus on their broader digital transformation efforts and business goals.

Automation is likely to save companies money that can be reinvested back into the business. A recent McKinsey study found almost all occupations blue collar and white collar have potential for some automation, which could result in a savings of about $16 trillion in wages per year.

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IT automation key to achieving digital business goals, remaining relevant - CIO Dive

Since the Industrial Age, automation has shifted the kind of work that humans must do. And with the current AI boom, anxiety over employment is at an all-time high. Will new technology lead to mass unemployment? Or will a whole new set of jobs replace what we have today?

Of course, the answer is nuanced, and both arguments have elements of truth. But while AI will undoubtedly create new jobs, the technology will hurt workers in lower skill jobs, according to Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University and a leading expert in AI.

As Vardi pointed out, manufacturing is actually at an all-time high. "It's not that we have not lost manufacturing, it has just changed," he said. "We are still manufacturing a lot in this country, but it has changed and uses 8 million fewer manufacturing employees." Vardi talked to TechRepublic about why, in particular, manufacturing was the "sweet spot for automation."

Two different schools of thought exist when it comes to the impact of automation on jobs, Vardi said.

"There is a school of the thought that very much believed that the economy is self-correcting, and if you automate something you should lower the cost," said Vardi. "If you lower the cost, demand should increase. If demand should increase, you will need to hire more workers."

But even economists, he said, think this view is overly simplistic. "When you lower the cost, demand will increase," said Vardi, "but it's not clear that it will be enough to compensate for it. It's really impossible to predict the result of automation on the local basis."

Vardi raised the example of ATMs. "ATMs is the one example where people thought there would be fewer tellersbut it turned out, we lowered the cost of operating the branch so much the banks opened more branches. And so we have hired more tellers," he said.

What did take jobs away, Vardi said, is the birth of mobile banking. "When do you go to a bank?" he asked. "Never. Technology will kill these branches. The ATM did not, but other technology will ultimately kill many of the branches."

Fintech, said Vardi, is particularly ripe for automation. "The tech community looks at banks as a big, fat, lazy target," he said. "They have obsolete business models, very high services, and nobody loves their bank. The one thing that banks do have is the trust element right, and deposit insurance." Still, said Vardi, "banks are going to have the fight of their life."

So is this age of AI different, somehow, than previous periods of automation?

"People always need to move to something that they do better than machines," Vardi said. "When people lost their jobs in agriculture, they moved to manufacturing. We had machines in manufacturing, but they had to be operated."

Vardi calls manufacturing a middle-skill job. "When the capability of the machine went up and the cost went down, operating industrial robots is now $15 dollars an hour, so we don't need so many people," he said. In terms of the idea of bringing back manufacturing, Vardi said he doesn't "know any economist who takes it seriously. We can try to think of how to have an economy where we encourage job creation, but manufacturing jobs are not coming back."

Instead, said Vardi, "we have higher value kind of jobs, in higher value industries. The question is how do we get the workers to adapt to such industries?"

I asked Vardi what he thought of the argument that technology will create new jobslike when the creators of Flippy, the burger-flipping robot, say that the robot will leave room for employees to do new, creative tasks.

"I think this is the propaganda of the creative class," said Vardi, "that says, 'Look, we get rid of the tedious jobs so you'll be able do new jobs, interesting, creative jobs.' But what jobs? What are these new creative jobs? So people give you example: Data analytics expert, data visualization. I said, 'Okay, who gets these jobs?'"

The point, said Vardi, is that the conversation is mostly confined to the educated class.

"What are the largest corporations in the United States?" asked Vardi. "Let's look at the top six. There's one non-tech company there. It's Exxon. The rest are Apple, Alphabet Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook. What is the total market capitalization of these companies? Between them it's about two and a half trillion dollars," he said. However, these companies only employ half a million people. And most of those employees are highly educated.

With new employment trends, said Vardi, you need to ask three things: Are we creating enough new jobs? Are we creating them fast enough? And, what skill level do the new jobs require?

As AI gets smarter, said Vardi, the definition of what is "routine work" expands. One example is a decision whether to grant bail, which can now be automated using troves of data around recidivism. "We are defining things that used to be creative decision making," said Vardi, "and saying no, it's routine."

"If machine can do it, it's routine," Vardi added. "AI is a moving target. We always call AI what we don't know how to do yet."

Many things we use in our daily lives used to be considered AI, Vardi said. "And now, we're saying those things are just an algorithm."

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Why automation in the age of AI will change the way we think of work - TechRepublic

The Company: Our client provides unique processing solutions to its customers and after sales services in the food and beverage industries. The company has a word-wide presence and the UK is recognised as one of its most important markets.

The Role: The Automation Engineer will be office based in High Wycombe with travel expected to site 25% of the time with occasional weekend work. There is a very open environment, challenging customers and projects and excellent opportunities for progression, along with a very attractive package.

Depending on your gained experience our client will assist with training in the client's automation systems, project leadership or dairy competence. There is also a position for a Senior Automation Engineer if you are slightly more experienced.

Main responsibilities:

* Development and commissioning of plant automation systems (hardware and software) as part of an overall production solution as a combination of process and automation * Program Tetra PlantMaster solutions based on our Siemens and Rockwell platforms. * Assist Sales and Engineering with automation evaluations and quotations * Perform Hardware configuration, system setup and tests of configurations * Provide technical expertise in customer discussions * Prepare and perform FAT tests * Commission your own code as well as code written by others * Manage medium to large scale multiple projects simultaneously to ensure project meets project plans, budget, and contractual obligations * Projects will be run mostly in UK, but work on projects in other countries will be expected. * The automation project scope includes the complete S95/S88 model (Recipe Handling, HMI, PLC, Data Acquisition and Traceability).

Essential Skills / Qualifications: * Degree in Automation Engineering or similar in combination with a minimum of 5 years working experience in this area. * Experience in processing industries, ideally liquid food or beverages. * Wonderware platform, Archestra and/or InTouch. * Siemens S7 programming and/or ControlLogix. * Databases and SQL-scripting, networks and Windows environment. * Development and commissioning of plant automation systems.

Desirable Skills / Qualifications: * Programming in Tetra PlantMaster. * Experience from project management is important but not vital. * Dairy experience is an important plus.

Key words: dairy, cheese, prepared food, ice cream, beverages, food, processing, liquid processing, pharmaceutical, automation, automation engineer, senior automation engineer

About Fircroft: Fircroft has been placing people in specialist technical industries for approaching half a century, focusing on mid to senior level engineers for contract and permanent roles worldwide. By applying for this job you give consent for Fircroft to contact you, via email & telephone, to discuss your application along with future positions and Fircroft's services.

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Automation Engineer - OilOnline