Category Archives: Automation

BARCELONA, SpainMobile World Congress 2017 provided a glimpse into how automation is currently enabled by the internet of things, and, down the line, will be further emboldened by 5G networks. Use cases ranging from lights out manufacturing to driverless trucking promise a future where common tasks will be turned over to software-controlled systems.

What wasnt highlighted, or brought into clear focus at the show, is what that means for the global workforce. Marcus Wheldon, president of Nokia Bell Labs, summed up the vision of automation a few months ago during a keynote address at the SCTE/IBSE Cable Tec Expo in Philadelphia: One of the reasons were excited about the future is we think the future is nothing like today. Were going to build a new network architecture. The point of the future is still about entertaining people, but its equally about changing our world by instrumenting everything. You can automate all mundane tasks. Its to create time. My first task is to create time.

So thats a summary of the near-philosophical vision. Now, Ill summarize what is, to me, the biggest problem. What about the billions of people who spent their time doing those mundane tasks that are now automated? Building on that, if the overarching goal of the telecommunications industry is to monetize the creation of time, whats the industrys responsibility, if any, to those people? To ask it another way, if youre the company or industry that displaces a huge part of the workforce, do you have a socioeconomic duty to lead the broader discussion around how these foundational shifts will impact us all?

Lets take a look at autonomous trucking, which will depend on wireless telecommunications technologies, as an example. Major manufacturers including Volvo, Scania and Daimler last year cooperated on the European Truck Platooning Challenge, which saw fleets of self-driving trucks arrive in the Netherlands from locations in Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Belgium. The trucks, overseen by a human backup, used Wi-Fi connected sensors, processors and radios to communicate, with the lead truck sending its actions to the following vehicles, which would mimic the machinations. This concept would revolutionize how goods move through supply chains. Fewer drivers could cover more ground in less time, the sheer physics of platooning could cut down of fuel consumption, and traffic congestion could be eased as a function of how close together the trucks are positioned.

Heres the downsidein May 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tallied 1,678,280 heavy and tractor-trailer drivers earning a mean annual wage of $42,500. Extend the same concept to light truck or delivery services drivers, and thats another 826,510 jobs that earn an average of $34,080 per year. Expand it again to include taxi drivers and chauffeurs and theres another 180,960 jobs producing an average of $26,070 per year. From just one part of one vertical in one country, thats 2.6 million jobs that spread more than $100 billion per year into the larger economy.

I had the opportunity to speak with Susan Welsh de Grimaldo of Strategy Analytics in Barcelona during MWC. She recalled, on her way to the venue, she was talking with her cab driver and mentioned the prevalence of autonomous vehicles on the show floor. Hes like, Wait a minute. What does that mean for my job? she said. Ive also heard about job creation opportunities. I also heard a lot about, even within telcos, retooling their own skill sets. A lot of the skills people have to do today, with all the transition on the network to software-defined networking and NFV and things like that happening, a lot of those tools and skills will be legacy. People are going to lose jobs. Will they have the right skills for the new jobs that are available?

A major trend in telco, driven by the need for SDN and NFV, is what Welsh de Grimaldo referred to as retooling. Margaret Chiosi, distinguished network architect at AT&T Labs, in an interview last year, called it reskilling. AT&T, with its ECOMP initiatives, is a leader in the push toward software control, which often comes with an organizational shift to whats commonly called a devops model. As Chiosi explained, It would be great if all the operators improved their software development skill sets. This would help accelerate the realization of the SDN-enabled cloud. Because of this need, AT&T is reskilling our workforce: from hardware to software skills; wireline to IP and wireless skills; from data reporters to data scientists. This is a company wide initiative and we are providing a number of ways for our employees to build on top of the skills they already have and gain new ones.

But this isnt an easy thing to do. On the sidelines of MWC, Ann Hatchell, vice president of network marketing for Amdocs, said that, based on her conversations with operator customers, I think probably the number one pain point, it always sort of comes down to this ability to transition their own workforce. Virtualization is a cultural challenge. Its a challenge just in terms of the resources that have been dedicated to lots of functions. Many [operators]have their own training programs to start bringing these organizations together. Its interesting because, as the technologies converge across multiple domains, that means addressing these challenges.

The point here is that the telecom industry, which is, in many ways, creating the need for massive retooling and reskilling in every other industry, is having trouble accomplishing the same thing. So where does that leave the long-haul truckers, delivery drivers and cabbies?

In a video interview with Welsh de Grimaldo and Monica Paolini, founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting, Paolini commented: You can resist change but that doesnt work. You need to embrace change. You need to say, Whats the best you can do out of it. Picking up on the fate of cabbies, she said, If you really look at how many cab drivers youre going to have today and 20 years from now, thats really the long way to look at the question. We need to just look at the big picture and understand what is it as a societywe need to do to adapt to that change but not resist it. The connectivity is just going to be the fabric that unites it all. Its good and its good news for the industry.

Theres more good news too. There are eyes on the big picture and theres time to address it. Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates, in a recent interview with Quartz, examined the workforce aspects of turning manual processes over to algorithms. Right now, the human worker does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, youd think that wed tax the robot at a similar level. Gates said automation would free up labor, which, in turn, could be used to improve elder services, education and other things where human empathy and understanding are still very, very uniqueSo if you can take the labor that used to do the thing automation replaces and financially and training-wise and fulfillment-wise have that person go off and do these other things, then youre net ahead. Heres a transcript of that fascinating interview.

As to the timing, It wont happen overnight, Welsh de Grimaldo said. I dont think we see a lot of these jobs go away real quickly. So I think theres time to prepare, but I think its time to really start thinking through as citizens, as government, as associations like GSMA, what role do we all play?

Id like to start a dialogue with our community here at RCR Wireless News to get some insight into the answer to that question: What role do we all play? Contact me at skinney@rcrwireless.com and follow me on Twitter @seankinneyRCR.

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As automation displaces the workforce, what's our responsibility? - RCR Wireless News

Todays information technologies big data, artificial intelligence, robotics, and embedded computing (the so-called Internet of things) are transforming every industry and raising widespread concerns about job losses and economic inequality. Analysts differ on whether the issue is about jobs, tasks or work activities; they disagree on the extent of automation; and theyre not sure how long it will take.

Even the conservative forecasts are bleak. McKinsey and Company estimates that existing technologies could eventually automate about half the activities that people get paid nearly $15 trillion to do globally. This amounts to 1.2 billion full-time equivalent jobs (FTEs), of which 61 million are located in the US. If we apply a 10 percent rule of thumb our population is about one-tenth that of the US this could mean 6 million Canadian FTEs are at risk: equivalent to one-third of our workforce.

Should we worry? Likely not, say optimists (including McKinsey). Demographic trends are about to produce a shortage of human labour. The productivity and GDP growth associated with automation will not arrive any time soon, the optimists argue. And the full effects of job displacement will take several decades to unfold. In the meantime, humans should learn to manage and complement smart machines and do the sorts of things that only people can do.

The pessimists, on the other hand, say it wont be that easy. Tomorrows jobs will be insufficient in number, inferior in quality and badly paid. We must address the impacts of net growth in unemployment, underemployment, precarious jobs, and economic inequality, they say.

But there is an elephant in the room that no one is talking about. The focus on labour substitution in Canada and everywhere else vastly underestimates the breadth and numbers of at-risk jobs.

Labour substitution relates to the replacement of humans (e.g., car insurance sales representatives) by machines (e.g., car insurance sales apps.). But innovations dont just automate jobs and tasks. They can also make them functionally irrelevant or economically unviable. Its not just about labour substitution: its also about labour obsolescence.

Take the transportation sector. Soon a handful of global firms, such as Uber, may be the dominant providers of automated mobility (transportation) services, provided on demand. Many Canadians will refrain from owning vehicles, which sit unused over 95 percent of the time. They will reap huge cost savings, including over $1,000 per year on car insurance. On-demand, automated mobility, if adopted widely, will yield enormous environmental, safety, health, accessibility, financial and other benefits.

But global automated mobility companies wont buy personal car insurance. Some will self-insure. Others will cut big deals with big insurance firms. Demand for car insurance will plummet. Car insurance jobs wont just decrease as a result of labour substitution. They will become obsolete.

Changes like this have happened throughout history. A disruptive technology innovation facilitates business model innovations that transform entire industries. This results in old jobs (or tasks) becoming irrelevant or economically unviable. The changes also generate demand for new occupations and skills. But the balance these days is typically negative.

Online advertising, viewed from a labour substitution perspective, is the automation of print media ad advertising jobs. This is true in a minor way. But, for the most part, online advertising made those advertising jobs obsolete. More important, online advertising contributed to the collapse of print publications, eliminating or reducing the market value of all sorts of jobs, in areas ranging from home delivery to investigative journalism. Canadas production of newsprint, printing and writing paper declined by half over the 2005-15, and jobs went with it. These losses occurred at dizzying speed, belying the view that the changes would take many decades.

Rather than look exclusively at labour substitution to understand the impact of technology on jobs, we must define and analyze changes that affect changing labour demand in the extended ecosystem (or the business web), inside and outside a core sector. The result of this analysis is often a combination of job creation, job destruction and job displacement.

Changes that will result in labour obsolescence include:

To measure the size of this problem, I identified automotive ecosystem jobs and subsectors using the 2011 Census. Based on this initial assessment, business models built around self-driving vehicles will pose big job risks for 1.1 million Canadians over the coming decades. Half a million of these, again according to the 2011 Census, are professional drivers who face the prospect of labour substitution. They include transport truck drivers; delivery, courier and mail workers; and taxi/limousine drivers. (On-demand drivers for Uber and the like were not counted in the 2011 census.) For the remaining majority (600,000 jobs police; and insurance, auto service/body shop, dealership/distribution/rental/leasing, manufacturing and gas station workers), the main challenge isnt labour substitution, its functional obsolescence.

The automotive ecosystem is but one of many ecosystems. Similar changes are occurring across the economy in agriculture, natural resources, retail/distribution, professional services and many other sectors. In every case, labour obsolescence will exacerbate the challenges of labour substitution.

Clearly, we must get more creative if we are to understand our labour market challenges (and opportunities). We must face up to the likelihood that a new economy one with fewer good jobs and lower pay is upon us. And we must act now to minimize and mitigate the impact on Canadians. We owe it to our kids.

This article is part of the The Changing Nature of Workspecial feature.

Photo:AP Photo/Eric Risberg/The Canadian Press

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The automation elephant in the room - Policy Options (registration)

March 6, 2017

STOCKTON For more than 40 years, robots have been at work in U.S. factories doing mainly routine, repetitive work. While the number of manufacturing jobs has gone down in this country, productivity has gone up.

Here in the Central Valley, automation has been important in distribution centers, such as Amazon.com, where robots often retrieve items from shelves for shipping, for example.

Everything from wrapping pallets to self-programming robots, said San Joaquin Partnership CEO Michael Ammann who recently saw the latest in manufacturing and distribution center automation on display at a Southern California trade show.

For example, vision software can now inspect everything from sheet metal to water bottle seals much more quickly and accurately than humans can.

A lot of unskilled parts of the production process or inspection are going away, Ammann said.

There is disagreement among economists about how many jobs will be lost to automation and other technology such as 3D printing, driverless cars and artificial intelligence.

Economist Tom Pogue of the Center for Business and Policy Research at University of the Pacific notes that Amazons automation reinvented e-commerce, which brought thousands of jobs to the Central Valley but other jobs were lost in other retail sectors. Counting the winners and losers is complicated.

While we have those jobs at Amazon, thinking about it in the broader context, how many jobs arent necessarily just being lost, but how many jobs arent being created in regular brick and mortar stores? he said. You see all the boxes being dropped off at your house and your neighbors house. Its real, that transformation of shopping.

However, most experts seem to agree that work itself is changing and workers need to prepare themselves and adapt.

A Pew Research study released last October analyzed Bureau of Labor data and found that employment is rising faster in jobs that require higher levels of preparation more education, training and experience. In fact, the number of such jobs increased from 49 million in 1980 to 83 million in 2015.

The question is, educated how? And trained for what?

You almost have to fall back on rules of thumb: if a person needs to be involved, then a person needs to be involved, Pogue said. So, things like nursing, the interpersonal services become obvious areas, particularly when theyre relatively high-paid.

Two researchers at the Darden School of Business at University of Virginia have been thinking a lot about what the future holds for workers.

Katherine Ludwig and Ed Hess have written a new book on surviving the changing jobs landscape called Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age.

McKinsey and Company did a study and found that if current technology was applied widespread, then a majority of jobs that people are currently paid to do would be automated, said Ludwig in a telephone interview.

Ludwig and Hess cite research from the University of Oxford that says 47 percent of American jobs will be lost to automation in the next 15 years. Artificial intelligence and automation have already made their way into other sectors that many people thought were safe, such as law, accounting and medicine.

They say people who can change their mindset about work will be able to take advantage of emerging opportunities.

It means a change in what the humans will be needed to do, Ludwig said. Its things that computers and robots and artificial intelligence wont be able to do.

Many of those jobs will involve engaging socially and emotionally with other people, in nursing jobs, for example.

Ludwig and Hess call the change in mindset the new smart and soon people wont be measured by how much they know but by the quality of their thinking, their ability to be open-minded, to collaborate and to be a lifelong learner.

So, its a whole different view of what it means to be a smart, successful person, Ludwig said.

Ammann believes opportunities exist for people who are willing to adapt. But they need to embrace technology and seek out training. He believes people who dont finish high school will be vulnerable.

My concern is not so much getting people to train for this or updating their skills, its the folks who dont have any kind of threshold and just seem to think that theres going to be some kind of unskilled position for them, Ammann said. We all have to progress. Thats all there is to it.

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Automation and robot-proofing your career - Central Valley Business Journal

When it Comes to the Economy, Automation is Buzzing

The rise of robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have put us on the brink of a new automation age, projected to last from 2015 to 2085, according to McKinsey. Unlike the type of automation we witnessed during the Industrial Revolution, during which the steam engine replaced routine physical work activities, the changes we can expect from this new transformative period will center around cognitive capabilities, like consequential decision-making, tacit judgments, and sensing emotion. These activities have traditionally required a college degree, which is why the world is now alarmed at the broad swaths of the job market at risk of becoming obsolete.

Clearly, there are unparalleled productivity gains from this new type of intelligent automation. But what are the implications for customer-facing functions like customer care and support? And what limits should be placed on how much automation is allowed in these spaces?

Automation: a Friend or Foe?

According to Fast Company, automation is expected to eliminate 6% of US jobs in the next five years. Other observers and experts, like IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, have stated that while AI will reduce jobs in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, the corresponding increase in programming and development roles will lead to net job creation. As far as customer service agents are concerned, chatbots probably pose the biggest risk to job loss. But like Rometty, I feel that the effects of automation are not so black-and-white.

We could reframe the threat of automation as an opportunity for augmentation-Harvard Business Review

My prediction is that, as customers continue to demonstrate their preference for effortless, mobile-friendly channels like messaging apps over phone calls, the model for customer service will likely shift towards a smaller number of specialized, highly trained, insourced customer care agentswho, with support from technology like machine learning, auto-tagging and intelligent distribution of actionable conversions (also known as PLAY), will be able to handle a larger volume of customers inquiries.

Webcast, March 15th: How to Scale Upmarket with Enterprise Field Sales

Whereas traditional customer service staff often function on the level of rote memorizationreading from outdated, standardized scriptsthe ability to interface with various intricate technologies will actually boost the value of todays social customer service agents on the job market.

Partial Phase-Out: What Automation Will and Wont Change

In part, some of the panic over automation is a natural reaction to the way its been framed. When we talk about the new automation age, its important to recognize that individual activities are a better unit of measurement than entire occupations. As McKinsey points out, rather than replacing jobs outright, automation will often mean that certain tasks become more efficient.

Following the framework detailed in the above chart, we can say that customer service involves a mix of data collection, data processing, and stakeholder interactions. According to McKinseys analysis, the latter activityin which the agent speaks to the customer directlyis less susceptible to automation than the others. Why is that?

The answer, in part, is that modern consumers are simply fed up with the type of non-personalized, synthetic resolution they receive from call centers, and need to feel like they are interacting with a human who can speak to them about their issues in a way thats natural, relatable and down-to-earthespecially if they are upset or already frustrated with attempting to fix their issue.

So chatbots will not necessarily make social customer service agents obsolete, but will work with them as a kind of personal assistant, serving as the initial, high-level touch point of requests, and escalating issues when they become more complex. A perfect example of this workflow can be illustrated by Twitters DM Dispatcher by Conversocial, a functionality that prompts customers to proactively provide details on the service issue at the first point of contact, eliminating the initial back-and-forth between agents and customers to gather more context. And, as these technologies enable customers to get even complex issues solved in-the-moment, at the touch of a button, more customer care volume will shift away from phone calls and into messaging.

The Tradeoffs of Automation

According to McKinsey, technical feasibility is just one of the components that needs to be addressed when predicting the impact of automation, but not the only relevant factor. Another to consider is the side effects beyond the cost reduction derived from labor substitution. For instance, what would happen to customer satisfaction scores if service interactions are completely automated and robotized? Are companies jeopardizing the incremental value of increased retention and satisfaction by focusing too much on cost reduction? There must be a balance.

Another factor to consider is regulatory and social-acceptance issues, such as the degree to which machines are acceptable in any particular setting. A robot may, in theory, be able to replace some of the functions of a nurse, for instance. But for the time being, most patients would reject fully robotic treatment, in favor of an actual health care professional, capable of answering complex questions and handling emotional situations. Likewise, in customer service, people will still expect a degree of human contact when it comes to the more time-sensitive, emotional issuessuch as when a customer needs to cancel a stolen credit card, or change a flight at the last minute.

The Future is Humanity at Scale

Unleashing automations full potential requires people and technology to work together. And although our initial instinct is to resist the upheaval of potential job loss, an integrated approach that makes life easier and effortless for customers will encourage them to turn to social, messaging and digital channels to resolve more and more of their conflicts, ultimately creating more and new future jobs in the social customer service sector.

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Welcome to the New Automation Age - Business 2 Community

Recently there was a programmer from San Francisco who had managed to automate his work. For six years he didnt lift a finger to his workplace. Thankfully, he didnt have any friends who would check up on him just some developers who would occasionally ask him about the software he was testing. Automation helped him play League of Legends by skipping work.

Even though it sounds fun, there is an underlying horror at this instance. This means that this guy was able to create software that would put him out of work. Eventually, the man did lose his job when his officials found out what he had done. Whats worse is he forgot how to code in these six years and has now become completely skill-less to find another job.

The implications of industrial automation are threatening to the workplace. To this day politicians and campaigners have been focusing on how the immigrants are eating up jobs. But we are neglecting the one issue that we face immediate implications from automation.

A 2013 study by Oxford University academics Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne suggests that automation will replace a lot of white collar and blue collar jobs. This has drawn the attention of several governments around the world. Further, a recent report from the United Nations stated that there is a high chance that industrial automation would disrupt the labor market. But this report was more detailed indicating that most of the disruption will occur in the routine tasks. This is why it will affect the developing, rather than the developed, countries.

Despite this announcement, it is pretty clear that such announcements and predictions had been made in the past. When automation solutions were coming in the country, many people were afraid they would lose their jobs. Even many did lose their jobs, but eventually, a different sector developed that needed a different skill set.

The US Labor Department predicted that some fields will exist in future appointing 65% of the school children. These kids will have to gain skills in specific areas that give them the opportunity to get those jobs. But in the meantime, those adults who do not have the necessary skills to adapt to the changing nature of employment will lose their jobs.

In short, automation system will create jobs only after it makes some people lose jobs at first. A report from the Chief Scientific Advisor to Britain suggested that there are possible benefits of appointing AIs in areas such as tax collection. There are also questions of morality that will judge the future of the jobs.

Alison Sander, the director of the Centre for Sensing and Mining the Future at the Boston Consulting Group, says, Theres a significant shift happening in the skill sets people to need. But thats not a focus of our education system.

The worst fear is that many of the skills taught today are no longer or will no longer be relevant down the years. The future of youths can only be determined if they are being given proper technical education. A thorough revision of the current education system is the only way to ride this tide.

Also Read:Cloudflare Leaked Passwords And User Info For Months!

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Will Industrial Automation Truly Take Our Jobs? - Tech News Inc

As one of the world's largest employers, McDonald's(NYSE:MCD) often finds itself at the center of debates about wages and the potential effects of automation. Rising labor costs pose a threat to the company and its franchisees, and the scale is starting to tip in favor of developing technology being cost-effective enough to replace human jobs.

The restaurant chain's new automation push is still in its early stages and can be counted on as a source of controversy in the years to come, but the effects of the trend stand to create long-term tailwinds for McDonald's and its investors.

Image source: McDonald's.

McDonald's is in the process of bringing self-order kiosks to all of its locations, and this initiative, along with the rollout of mobile-based ordering and payment, presents a way to improve functions and efficiency throughout the chain. Perceivedquality of service has been an issue for the company, and reducing employee-customer interaction has the potential to relieve friction and free up employees to perform other tasks. Studies and customer feedback have also indicated that a substantial portion of the millennial generation prefers to bypass human interaction when placing orders, so the new initiatives could help to ingratiate Mickey D's with one of its most crucial age demographics.

The surge in kiosk and mobile adoption is occurring industrywide and points to technology that's becoming increasingly attractive. Wendy's (NASDAQ:WEN)recently announced that it will add self-ordering stations at 1,000 of its restaurants by the end of 2017, and Panera Bread plans to have kiosks at all of its locations within the next several years. Other competitors, including Burger King, CKE Restaurants, and Tim Hortons are also transitioning to automated ordering.

McDonald's hasn't given much color on the expenses of adding self-order stations, but comments from Wendy's management could provide some insight. Wendy's Chief Information Officer David Trimm has indicated that franchisees will pay roughly $15,000 for three ordering kiosks, and he anticipates that it will take less than two years for the benefits created by self-ordering kiosks to offset the investment. The timeline to break even is probably similar for McDonald's franchisees, and the benefits of kiosks will likely become more pronounced with time.

Shifting to this new technology requires that stores continue to employ cashiers to assist with the new process and cater to customers who prefer traditional service. But the need for these roles should fall as kiosks become the norm, leaving employees free to take on other roles. Kiosks have already freed up some McDonald's staff to provide table service, and the company is testing curbside delivery in conjunction with mobile ordering and payment.

Automated ordering also means that more workers should be available for the kitchen, helping to address franchisee concerns about increasingly complicated menus and challenges related to customization.CEO Steve Easterbrook believes that the perception of time constraints can make ordering at McDonald's stressful and that this issue can be alleviated through the company's new investments. He has also indicated that the additional time to peruse the menu encourages customization and premium sales, generating higher average spending per consumer.

Payscale lists the median wage for an American fast food worker at $8.24 per hour, a far cry from the $15 per hour benchmark that many groups are calling for. With labor often making up 20% or more of costs for this industry, sizable increases to payroll can reasonably be expected to be passed onto consumers. That presents a major problem for value-focused restaurants like McDonald's.

In the U.S., the fast food chain is struggling with declining traffic but has managed to offset this trend by increasing the average spending per check. The extent to which the company can continue to raise prices is limited, however.McDonald's thrives by offering low-cost food options -- a model that makes it very sensitive to increasing expenses. While food and materials may fall mostly outside the company's control, it will enjoy increasing flexibility with labor thanks to the automation trend.

Easterbrook has been careful when commenting on the likelihood of new technologies that will eliminate jobs, but competitors including Wendy's and CKE Restaurants have directly linked their respective automation efforts to rising labor costs, touting the benefits of smaller in-store headcounts. Talking about replacing workers with technology might not be politically expedient for McDonald's at the moment, but a pared-down workforce is almost certainly a desirable outcome for the company -- and one it is certain to explore going forward.

Keith Noonan has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Panera Bread. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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McDonald's Automation Push Is Great News for Investors -- The ... - Motley Fool

Forbes

Inventing The Telephone, The Mechanical Automation Of Work, And Searching By Associative Links Forbes This week's milestones in the history of technology include the invention of the telephone, automating telephone exchanges and textile weaving, and the idea of searching for information through associative links. March 6, 1997. The first-ever ...

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Inventing The Telephone, The Mechanical Automation Of Work, And Searching By Associative Links - Forbes

By 2020, the industrial sector will be producing nearly 15 trillion gigabytes of data. With increasing amounts of data, manufacturers must find more effective and efficient ways to put this data to use, says Rockwell Automation, a leading company dedicated to industrial automation and information.

Rockwell Automation is releasing expanded and scalable analytics offerings to help customers more quickly and easily gain insight from their investments in automation technology.

Our Connected Enterprise vision has always had analytics and collaboration at its core, said John Genovesi, vice president of information software and process business, Rockwell Automation. As we expand our information solutions offerings, a primary goal is to make analytics more approachable and right-sized for the customer. New analytics solutions help our customers move ahead on their connected enterprise journey, no matter where they are today. The new Rockwell Automation offerings expand capabilities for analytics across the plant floor for devices, machines and systems, as well as throughout the enterprise. In this approach, analytics are computed and gain context closest to the source of decision at the appropriate level in the architecture to return the highest value from edge devices to the cloud on a variety of new appliances, devices, and on- or off-premise cloud platforms.

New solutions cover remote monitoring, machine performance, device heath and diagnostics, and predictive maintenance to enable companies to derive value from their data more quickly, easily and incrementally. At the enterprise level, these solutions offer more powerful ways to integrate plant-floor data into business intelligence strategies.

For any manufacturer or industrial company, control systems are the birthplace of data, Genovesi added. As the provider of those systems, Rockwell Automation can help customers better understand, analyze and act on this data with several new products and services.

We have watched Rockwell Automation move forward significantly in the analytics space, coming to play a role equal to that they serve in the MES/MOM and EMI arenas, noted Matthew Littlefield, president and principal analyst, LNS Research. Our research on IIoT and analytics adoption clearly shows a need for more flexibility and scalability in this space. Its encouraging to see companies like Rockwell Automation walk the talk of industrial analytics.

Device Analytics The new FactoryTalk Analytics for Devices appliance provides health and diagnostic analytics from industrial devices. It crawls your industrial network, discovers your assets and provides analytics by transforming the data generated into preconfigured health and diagnostic dashboards. The system also delivers action cards to your smartphone or tablet if a device requires attention.

As the application uncovers information about how the devices are related to each other, such as their network topology or fault causality, it starts to understand the system on which it is deployed to make prescriptive recommendations. For example, with the appliance in place, it can send users an action card if an Allen-Bradley PowerFlex drive needs to be reconfigured to maintain optimal performance, helping prevent potential downtime and prescribing solutions to maintenance teams.

Analytics for Equipment Builders At the machine level, FactoryTalk Analytics for Machines cloud application provides equipment builders access to performance analytics from deployed systems to help support their customers via the FactoryTalk cloud. For manufacturers, this capability capitalizes on connected technologies to help drive higher availability and output while reducing maintenance costs.

System Analytics Expanding on the Rockwell Automation analytics capabilities, which already include historization and visualization capabilities, Rockwell Automation now provides a predictive maintenance solution that can help reduce downtime and maintenance costs. Using the latest in machine learning algorithms, this solution can predict failures before they happen and generate a maintenance work order to avoid costly downtime.

Enterprise Analytics To further enterprise analytics services, the SaaS-based FactoryTalk cloud offering will use Microsoft Azure IoT technology to allow for remote monitoring of assets, historization and dashboarding capabilities. Microsoft and Rockwell Automation are also collaborating to include Power BI business services for data discovery, mashups and visual analytics at the device level. TradeArabia News Service

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Rockwell Automation helps industries put data to use - Trade Arabia

Stakeholders were presented with a comprehensive roadmap of the automation system

State minister for information chairs the stakeholders meeting on Automation System of Audit Bureau circulation in Islamabad. PHOTO: PRESS RELEASE

Collective progress is contingent upon adopting breakthrough technology leading to creating pathways to transparency and efficiency, said State Minister for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb on Friday.

The minister stated this while overseeing the new media initiative in the first consultation session with the stakeholders on Automation System of Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) in Islamabad.

She told the participants that media and government are aligned in exploring potential proposals and creative ideas that enable greater progress and prosperity. Marriyum further stated that it was the need of the hour to introduce modern technology which aims for higher automation and computerisation of ABC.

The stakeholders, during the meeting, were presented with a comprehensive roadmap of the automation system of ABC in collaboration with Punjab Information Technology Board.

The stakeholder meeting was attended by the principal information officer of the press information department, director general internal publicity wing at the information ministry, director audit bureau of circulation, secretary information Sindh, Secretary Information Coordination Gilgit-Baltistan, Secretary Information K-P, Director Headquarter Information Department,Punjab and President APNS, General Secretary CPNE Aijaz ul Haq and senior officials of the ministry.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4th, 2017.

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New media initiative: Marriyum attends session on ABC automation - The Express Tribune

As one of the world's largest employers, McDonald's(NYSE: MCD) often finds itself at the center of debates about wages and the potential effects of automation. Rising labor costs pose a threat to the company and its franchisees, and the scale is starting to tip in favor of developing technology being cost-effective enough to replace human jobs.

The restaurant chain's new automation push is still in its early stages and can be counted on as a source of controversy in the years to come, but the effects of the trend stand to create long-term tailwinds for McDonald's and its investors.

Image source: McDonald's.

McDonald's is in the process of bringing self-order kiosks to all of its locations, and this initiative, along with the rollout of mobile-based ordering and payment, presents a way to improve functions and efficiency throughout the chain. Perceivedquality of service has been an issue for the company, and reducing employee-customer interaction has the potential to relieve friction and free up employees to perform other tasks. Studies and customer feedback have also indicated that a substantial portion of the millennial generation prefers to bypass human interaction when placing orders, so the new initiatives could help to ingratiate Mickey D's with one of its most crucial age demographics.

The surge in kiosk and mobile adoption is occurring industrywide and points to technology that's becoming increasingly attractive. Wendy's (NASDAQ: WEN)recently announced that it will add self-ordering stations at 1,000 of its restaurants by the end of 2017, and Panera Bread plans to have kiosks at all of its locations within the next several years. Other competitors, including Burger King, CKE Restaurants, and Tim Hortons are also transitioning to automated ordering.

McDonald's hasn't given much color on the expenses of adding self-order stations, but comments from Wendy's management could provide some insight. Wendy's Chief Information Officer David Trimm has indicated that franchisees will pay roughly $15,000 for three ordering kiosks, and he anticipates that it will take less than two years for the benefits created by self-ordering kiosks to offset the investment. The timeline to break even is probably similar for McDonald's franchisees, and the benefits of kiosks will likely become more pronounced with time.

Shifting to this new technology requires that stores continue to employ cashiers to assist with the new process and cater to customers who prefer traditional service. But the need for these roles should fall as kiosks become the norm, leaving employees free to take on other roles. Kiosks have already freed up some McDonald's staff to provide table service, and the company is testing curbside delivery in conjunction with mobile ordering and payment.

Automated ordering also means that more workers should be available for the kitchen, helping to address franchisee concerns about increasingly complicated menus and challenges related to customization.CEO Steve Easterbrook believes that the perception of time constraints can make ordering at McDonald's stressful and that this issue can be alleviated through the company's new investments. He has also indicated that the additional time to peruse the menu encourages customization and premium sales, generating higher average spending per consumer.

Payscale lists the median wage for an American fast food worker at $8.24 per hour, a far cry from the $15 per hour benchmark that many groups are calling for. With labor often making up 20% or more of costs for this industry, sizable increases to payroll can reasonably be expected to be passed onto consumers. That presents a major problem for value-focused restaurants like McDonald's.

In the U.S., the fast food chain is struggling with declining traffic but has managed to offset this trend by increasing the average spending per check. The extent to which the company can continue to raise prices is limited, however.McDonald's thrives by offering low-cost food options -- a model that makes it very sensitive to increasing expenses. While food and materials may fall mostly outside the company's control, it will enjoy increasing flexibility with labor thanks to the automation trend.

Easterbrook has been careful when commenting on the likelihood of new technologies that will eliminate jobs, but competitors including Wendy's and CKE Restaurants have directly linked their respective automation efforts to rising labor costs, touting the benefits of smaller in-store headcounts. Talking about replacing workers with technology might not be politically expedient for McDonald's at the moment, but a pared-down workforce is almost certainly a desirable outcome for the company -- and one it is certain to explore going forward.

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Keith Noonan has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Panera Bread. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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McDonald's Automation Push Is Great News for Investors | Business ... - Madison.com