Category Archives: Automation

Kongsberg Geospatial, developer of the TerraLens Geospatial Software Development Kit, has partnered with Iris Automation to enhance their Casia-G ground-based DAA system. Casia G is a ground-based surveillance system that continually monitors the airspace using a 360-degree optical solution to ensure UAS operation is safe from intruder aircraft. Iris Automation has recently received its second FAA Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) waiver to conduct flight operations in Reno, Nevada using Casia G. Kongsberg Geospatial now offers an operator situational awareness display fully integrated with Casia G that will provide visual cues, alerts and warnings as Casia G detects an intruder or if loss of separation occurs.

Iris Automation pioneered Casia I and Casia X, the first on-board, autonomous commercial collision avoidance safety systems for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Casia G leverages the same AI and computer vision technology - but stationary - to detect aircraft as they approach your UAS operation. In achieving the FAA waiver, Iris Automation had to prove a performant sensor solution for conducting safe BVLOS operations, which will be unlocking the full potential of drones.

This revolutionary sensor capability is combined with the decades of Kongsberg Geospatial display experience in airspace management. The joint capability will allow for an "electronic observer" vs a human observer.

"We are so pleased to partner with one of the premier airspace visualization software providers globally and utilize the situational awareness capability that they designed specifically for our product, Casia G." Said Jason Hardy-Smith, CTO of Iris Automation.

"We are excited to be partnered with Iris Automation and assist with drone flights in the National Airspace. The ground-based optical DAA is a proven cost-effective solution relative to other ground-based DAA systems," said Jordan Freed, President of Kongsberg Geospatial. "We look forward to commencing BVLOS flights in Reno this summer."

Source:http://www.kongsberggeospatial.com

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Kongsberg Geospatial Partners with Iris Automation to Enhance Casia-G Ground-Based Detect and Avoid System - AZoRobotics

Automation software expert OneVision and ctrl-s have been chosen as solution providers by the albelli-Photobox Group, one of the leading players in the online European photo product and gifting market. With the solution for an automated end-to-end workflow, the albelli-Photobox Group increases plant efficiency, production capacity, and sustained long-term corporate growth.

Regensburg. As one of the fastest growing photo print service providers, a key objective of the albelli-Photobox Group is to streamline multiple IT solutions with one platform. For this purpose, a Manufacturing Platform project was initiated. The joint workflow automation expertise of OneVision and ctrl-s ensures the print service provider with an automated end-to-end workflow. The albelli-Photobox Group has started to implement the manufacturing software solution across three European production plants. The implementation is realized with a cloud-based virtual plant management solution. One interface provides complete visibility and the opportunity for continuous improvement across the board.

OneVisions Automation Suites and the Symphony Smart Factory Framework of ctrl-s are providing a state-of-the art solution that enables albelli-Photobox Group the flexibility to grow and sustain their position as one of the leading players in the online European photo product and gifting market.

OneVision Software AG is an international software manufacturer for automation of production processes in the printing and publishing sectors as well as numerous other industry segments. For almost 30 years, the companys automation solutions have helped more than 3,000 customers worldwide to achieve greater profitability. As a globally active company, the OneVision Group comprises entities in Germany, USA, Great Britain, France, Brazil, Singapore and India.

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albelli-Photobox Group Selects OneVision Software and ctrl-s as Automation Partners - WhatTheyThink

As the world is moving rapidly towards automation, in India many things are still done manually. A recent video shared by Erik Solheim, a former Norwegian diplomat, shows how many Indians complete their tasks with almost robotic precision and coordination.

In a 53-second video shared by Solheim, a group of men can be seen rapidly cutting and stacking cabbages. The undated video, which appears to have been shot at a wholesale vegetable market, shows the men filling a whole sack of cabbages in less than a minute.

While sharing the video, Solheim wrote, This is why India doesnt need robotic automation.. So far, more than six lakh people have viewed the video.

Commenting on Solheims tweet, many people argued that introducing automation in a country like India, where there is no dearth of workers, will only result in unemployment.

Making this point, a Twitter user wrote, In a country where the human capital is high, the biggest challenge is to get them engaged so as to earn & live, otherwise they would take Robbery, Drugs etc. In such a country automation needs to be moderated. Macro Economics is important.

Another person remarked, Automation needs to be done where there is a need. Like high risk jobs, jobs which need a lot of accuracy etc. There is no point in automating everything. If everything is done by a machine, it means less jobs for people > no income > no purchasing power. No sales.

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Watch: This video shows why India does not need robotic automation - The Indian Express

MQTT is becoming a popular protocol forIndustrial IoT (Internet of Things) data.Developed for connecting remotedevices to a central server, it is lightweight, efficient,and secure. However, IoT implementationsare growing larger and more complex, and demandis increasing for OT/IT connectivity. MQTT is nowbeing called on to aggregate and send diverse collectionsof data values over increasingly complexnetwork topologies.

To meet these challenges MQTT must getsmarter. As a transport protocol, MQTT specifiesthat messages are simply carriednot readlikea letter in the post. But that doesnt have to bethe case. What would happen if the letter carriercould read the mail? In other words, what if wegave an MQTT broker the ability to parse themessages it carries? It would be able to handlemessages more intelligently and include someinformation on the status of the data source orquality of the connection.

Data collectionA smart broker should be able to collect datain an intelligent way. For example, on largesystems data can come from a wide varietyof MQTT devices, each with its own messageformat. A broker that parses messages couldconvert these to a common message representationand make that available to all clients.Other data sources might include non-MQTTprotocols such as OPC UA, Modbus, DDE, andothers. A smart broker with protocol conversioncapabilities could act as a gateway for thisdata to any MQTT client or cloud ser vice.

Data consistencyIn real-time industrial systems, data consistencyfrom source to consumer is vital. Data thatsstale or out of correct time sequence can lead toincorrect decisions. Any disconnects or networkirregularities must be known.

Data can become inconsistent in several ways.If messages arrive at an MQTT broker faster thanthey can be delivered, some may be dropped. Ordata from multiple message streams may get sentto a client out of sequence. Also, if a data sourcegoes offline, the client may not know whether anunchanged value is current or stale.

A smart broker can ensure data consistencyby queueing incoming data in an intelligent way,passing on only the latest values. It can alsoparse timestamps on messages from differentdata streams to sequence them properly, as wellas pass along data and connection quality informationwith each value update.

Data securitySecurity is critical when accessing data from aproduction system. The MQTT push architecturethat connects outbound through firewalls isquite secure, but many corporate security policiesrequire isolating OT systems using a DMZ. This isproblematic for MQTT since messages must bepassed via two or more servers, while MQTT qualityof service guarantees are only valid for a singlesender-receiver hop. As a result, data at the endof a multi-hop daisy chain can become unreliable.

A smart broker that parses messages andconverts protocols can solve this problem byusing a tunnel. The device producing the MQTTdata would connect to one instance of the smartbroker. The message data, along with qualityand timestamp information, gets tunnelled viaa secure, TCP-enabled protocol to a secondinstance of the smart broker. That instance wouldconvert the data back into MQTT, with values,timestamps, and quality codes intact.

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Advantages of a Smart MQTT Broker - Automation World

Intelligent automation enables public servants to focus on creative tasks that only humans can do. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels

Most government organisations have embarked on a digital transformation program and automated some processes in their operations. Some are at an early stage of this journey, others are more advanced. While circumstances from organisation to organisation may differ, the rationale underpinning the automation push remains the same to remove friction from business processesand reduce errors that can be introduced by manual keying and rekeying of data.

Challenges are heightened in the public sector and amongst healthcare organisations in particular, many of which are using legacy systems to deal with increasing volumes of data. At the same time, they are operating with diminished budgets that make it difficult to justify investment in new technology unless there is proven ROI.

Public sector organisations systems were placed under even more pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdown forced government and healthcare bodies to accelerate the implementation of technology to ensure people could access the essential services they needed remotely.

By fully embracing intelligent automation, many organisations implemented a step-change in the way they work and enjoyed significant benefits. These benefits were discussed at a webinar held in April hosted by SS&C Blue Prism Canada entitled Accelerating digital transformation: how intelligent automation can set the foundations for government and healthcare of the future.

One organisation that has already reaped significant benefits from embarking on its own digital transformation journey is ATB Financial, part of the Crown Corporation of Canada, which provides financial services to more than 770,000 residents and businesses.

It started exploring the benefits of intelligent automation in 2017 to support customer journeys, create value for its clients, and at the same time drive internal productivity improvements.

Janka Coppens, managing director, intelligent automation, at ATB Financial, explained that the institution has focused on automating non-value-added tasks, enabling consistent and reliable customer experiences, and providing clients with choices in how they deal with us.

The team redesigns inefficient processes by combining RPA with complementary technologies such as machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing. We leverage design thinking and lean management principles to find sustainable and scalable solutions for the future, Coppens said.

The ROI that ATB Financial has enjoyed since adopting this approach has been impressive. According to Coppens, it has resulted in 16.5 million cumulative efficiency savings, which equates to 340,000 hours in work effort and that number is increasing every month. By embracing automation ATB has also reduced cycle time by 99%. Something that used to take three days to fulfil now takes three minutes, she said.

Although she readily admits automation is not a silver bullet it needs to be fit for purpose Coppens added that automating processes has freed up team members and increased the capacity for them to be able to focus on value added, complex work. So weve taken away the mundane.

It is a similar scenario at Alberta Health Services (AHS), Canadas leading healthcare organisation, which supports 4.6 million citizens. The intelligent automation work it has been doing initially focused on corporate functions, but going forward AHS intends to transform clinical functions as well by automating processes that employees hate doing. So were trying to enact that kind of if you hate it automate it mentality, explained Jesse Tutt, innovative IT intelligent automation lead at AHS.

Using SS&C Blue Prism software the team led by Tutt has deployed 16 automations and freed up more than 22 full time equivalent (FTE) of capacity in just 15 months.

We have freed up in the area of around 20,000 annualised hours to date by implementing intelligent automation, said Tutt. In the next month, we should double that, and then in six months we should triple it. Thats our goal. So were going to get some really exciting automations in our pipeline.

Grant Abrams, partner and Ottawa market leader, management consulting, at KPMG Canada, is as excited as Tutt about the improvements governments can make by embracing intelligent automation. Abrams remit is to help public sector organisations to optimise their corporate service functions in particular, often by leveraging AI and RPA.

He noted that historical attitudes towards automation and digital workers have changed. I know that certainly in the early days, there was a lot of reluctance around the robots are coming, theyre going to take away our jobs, but from what Ive seen with most clients, theyre actually quite accepting of the idea of having digital workers come in and take away the boring parts of their job. It frees them up to do the creative things that only humans can do in terms of complex problem solving, said Abrams.

And thats just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the benefits organisations can enjoy by implementing intelligent automation. It is about more than just the efficiency and cost savings, he added. The robots work 24/7 so the turnaround times are a really big improvement as well. Also, they always do what you tell them. Humans make mistakes. If robots make a mistake, its because you told them to do the wrong thing. So you enjoy significant error rate reductions as well.

While some of the historical attitudes towards intelligent automation have softened, Steve Picot, vice president, Americas public sector and Latin America, at SS&C Blue Prism, observed that some organisations had been slow to embrace the technology. He felt that the single biggest roadblock for these was figuring out were RPA first takes root and exists within public sector bodies. Is it a business process or is it an IT process? That relatively simple question can be a hindrance for a lot of these programs getting started, he said.

He added that theres no such thing as a job that cant be made better by RPA and that if organisations embraced the technology which in turn would help them to hit the bottom line, increase profitability and productivity, decrease costs and decrease risk, this would enable them to get cross-functional agreement on widely implementing intelligent automation.

Abrams agreed with Picot that a successful roll-out of intelligent automation requires a partnership between IT and the business side of an organisation. And while he advised that the technology may not be the answer to every challenge you need to use the right tools for the right problems Abrams said that every organisation could benefit from embracing it.

I think some naysayers would say that in a perfect world we dont need intelligent automation all of our systems would be perfectly integrated and we would have end-to-end automation, he added. And that may or may not be the case. But what is definitely true is we dont live in a perfect world, and we never will, so intelligent automation is here to stay and needs to be part of your digital toolkit.

This SS&C Blue Prism Canada webinar was held on 14 April, with support from Global Government Forum. You can watch the 75-minute webinar via our dedicated event page.

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Canadian public sector organisations drive efficiencies and boost creativity through intelligent automation - Global Government Forum

Its 8:52 p.m. Exhausted, Beth finally updates the last patient record in her companys electronic health record (EHR) system. She loves her work as a clinical therapist helping patients recover from substance abuse and related issues. She loves the company she works for too, but with the organizations recent growth, its been difficult to find staff to keep up with the demand. As work piles up, Beth is getting burned out.

Though Beth is a fictional character, she is not alone. According to Forbes, during the pandemic, more than 70% of employees reported feeling burned out, and they felt like their employers werent doing enough to address it. Solving this problem is key to maintaining employee engagement and motivation, something both employees and employers value.

To address the problem, it is essential to first understand what causes burnout. Consider this definition from Dr. Alok Kanojia: Burnout is when someone who wants to do a good job and is capable of doing a good job, but theres a system that prevents them from doing it, and then they get exhausted, then they give up.

Unfortunately, most proposed solutions for burnout miss the root of the problem. At best, they address some of the symptoms of burnout with unreliable outcomes, or they put the onus of the solution on employees. However, mental health days and self-care only go so far when an employee knows they will fall further behind with each moment they are away.

Instead, start by addressing the broken systems and processes causing burnout in the first place. Automation technology and process optimization can help you address employee burnout while also improving customer satisfaction, increasing productivity, and lowering costs.

Implementing automation is not a quick fixbut its a powerful one. Here are five best practices to ensure your automation program works for your employees and alleviates burnout.

Automation can be intimidating, so its important to introduce the technology to your employees with a collaborative approach. Demonstrate how the technology can make their jobs easier. Involve employees in identifying which processes to automate. Ultimately, getting full buy-in from employees is key to understanding how processes are really executed in your organizationand how to automate them most effectively.

Big initiatives are often met with resistanceboth from employees and from leadership. Start with a project that impacts a single person or role and make a big deal about how it improved the job. A small investment with clear, measurable results will not only help you win the goodwill of your employees but will also go a long way toward getting key leadership on board with a larger investment.

Employees more readily trust their colleagues than their management. Identify the employees who realize the value of automation first and encourage them to promote the program among their peers.

The main objective of automation is to transfer tedious, mind-numbing work from employees to digital assistants. This frees up your employees to do more meaningful and valuable work. For this to be successful, you must also ensure your employees have the skills and training to confidently take on new roles and responsibilities.

Without support from the executive level, most automation programs fail in their first year. Many things can go wrong without appropriate oversight; for example, a key employee may leave and no one else knows how to complete their work, or automations may start to fail with no plan for long-term maintenance. To avoid scenarios like these, automation needs to be implemented as a program and not a project.

Lets return to our story about Beth to demonstrate how this works in the real world.

The problem: Beths employer is an integrated healthcare company with more than 1,000 employees. Business has been good, but it has been very difficult for them to hire people quickly enough to keep up. As a result, Beth and other employees were asked to work longer hours to support growth.

The solution: Automation was applied to tasks completed by clinical therapists like Beth. As it turns out, therapists spend a lot of time interacting with the EHR system. This slow and tedious process is not work therapists generally enjoy, but it is essential for billing and compliance.

After automation was implemented, therapists now update patient information in a prepared Excel spreadsheet instead of the EHR. This takes a fraction of the time compared to slowly navigating the EHR system. Once the spreadsheet is complete, the therapist simply saves it to a specific folder. From there, a digital assistant takes over, logs information into the EHR system, updates each record, and then moves the file to a work completed folder.

The outcome: Each therapist saves approximately 1.5 hours each day. The company has more than 50 therapists, which means they can add more work to each therapists plate without hiring additional staff, saving the company over $500,000 per year. Beth is also happier. She has fewer late nights and is devoting more time to her passion: helping patients.

The company has also been able to win more new work because it can scale quickly, and turnover is down because employees can do more of the work they love. Thanks to automation, the company has now streamlined more than 100 processes in three years, with a 500%+ ROI.

Burnout is one of the major challenges facing todays workforce. Organizations need to invest thoughtfully to address it. Leveraging process optimization and automation to tackle the painful or broken processes that contribute to burnout is a powerful option that can offer relief today and prepare the business for future growth.

Andrew Woessneris CEO and Founder of R-Path Automation

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Five best practices for using automation to address employee burnout - Fast Company

The fleet management software company KeepTruckin Inc. is reinventing itself as an internet of things-based automation company and rebranding itselfas Motive to better reflect the fact its no longer focused solely on the trucking industry.

The company began life with its smartphone apps for truck drivers and electronic logging devices that track their compliance with government limits on driving time. Those devices connect to the smartphone app in order to create a digital log of a drivers driving hours, which cannot be altered.

However, in more recent years it has expanded into fleet management software, giving the folks at headquarters a way to track fleets of trucks in real time. Its tools rely on artificial intelligence to optimize the best routes for drivers, and can even automate tasks such as fuel tax reporting. It also sells a smart dashcam that comes with AI-based safety features that can identify behavior associated with critical events, helping educate drivers and fleet managers on how these events can be prevented.

The company has won a lot of fans, notably raising $149 million via a Series D round of funding back in 2019.

Motive said today that although its first customers were almost exclusively trucking firms, thats no longer the case. These days it says its fleet management software is used in all manner of industries across the physical economy, including agricultural firms, manufacturing, construction, field services and logistics.

In addition to the rebrand, Motive said its repackaging its technology with the launch of its Automated Operations Platform. The new offering is said to combine IoT hardware with AI-powered applications to automate vehicle management and equipment tracking, driver safety, compliance, maintenance, spend management and more.

Motive explained that the new platform is designed to give businesses across industries real-time visibility into their operations and enable AI-based automation of key workflows. The idea is that by identifying risks, problems and opportunities for customers and automatically taking action, Motives applications can improve the safety, productivity and profitability of physical operations.

Changing our name to Motive better reflects the diversity of customers we serve and problems we solve, said Motive Chief Executive Shoaib Makani.

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KeepTruckin rebrands as Motive as it shifts focus to automated operations - SiliconANGLE News

While lightweight scheduling remains the products core feature, advanced cloud automation and AI/ML have introduced new functionalities and greater flexibility into the solution

Amagi, a global leader in cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV, today launched the advanced version of its content planning and scheduling platform Amagi PLANNER. The product, introduced in 2021, makes planning and scheduling of channel programming seamless and cost-effective for digital-first companies. Amagi PLANNER enhancements include flexibility in ad break scheduling, pattern-based or repetitive scheduling, alerts, notifications for overruns, and more.

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Automated scheduling and more

Advanced tagging allows OTT platforms and end-users to access titles with ease through a feature-rich search option while unearthing data on audience preferences for personalized content scheduling. Amagi PLANNER also enables its users to build collections short duration titles grouped together with features that can be added on the fly, such as order of assets, automatic shuffling and pinning of assets, and more.

Amagi PLANNER makes ad monetization easier for content owners by facilitating automatic scheduling of fillers and ad breaks. The easy-to-use UI, with its drag and drop functionalities, and its daily and weekly calendars, is a bonus for content owners looking for a truly comprehensive scheduling software.

Amagis solutions have always had a two-pronged approach. We want our customers to derive operational efficiency while delivering an elevated viewing experience to their customers, said KA Srinivasan, Co-founder, Amagi. Amagi PLANNER is the very epitome of this concept, smoothly blending in automation and AI/ML efficiency to deliver a seamless user experience while offering value adds in the form of viewership insights that will benefit the end-user. We hope to see our customers thrive, and their audiences delighted, with our feature-rich solutions.

Amagi provides a complete suite of solutions for content creation, distribution, and monetization. Amagi clients include ABS-CBN, A+E Networks UK, beIN Sports, CuriosityStream, Discovery Networks, Fox Networks, Fremantle, NBCUniversal, Tastemade, Tegna, Vice Media,USAToday, and Warner Media, among others.

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Amagi infuses more personalization and automation into its scheduling platform, Amagi PLANNER - MarTech Series

Automation connotes the use or introduction of automatic equipment in a manufacturing or other process or facility, usually relieving human interference. When it comes to datacenter automation, it has the same significance: a process by which routine workflows and processes of a datacenterscheduling, monitoring, maintenance, application delivery, and so onare managed and executed without human administration. Automated datacenters have relieved human resources from manual tasks to more mission-critical tasks and productive jobs.

Other benefits of Automated Datacenters:

Delivers insight into server nodes and configurations

Automates routine procedures like patching, updating, and reporting

Enforces datacenter processes and controls in agreement with standards and policies

AI showing its value in the datacenter

Datacenters have been highly automated environments for some time now. With the help of environmental sensors in racks and servers, organizations can track many critical aspects of their infrastructure. Artificial Intelligence also has played a crucial role in it. For most public cloud providers and hyperscalers, AI & ML has already been a vital part of datacenter deployment and operations. Datacenter cooling and predictive maintenance are some of the most cited use cases for AI in the datacenter. AI is also being deployed in other crucial areas such as power management, workload management and security management. In addition to AI, its subset ML is deployed to automatically understand load patterns and predict when fluctuations occur, as well as for infrastructure operations.

Datacenter Market in India

The Indian datacenter market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8 % over 2021 to 2026. The rapid adoption of cloud-based business operations has encouraged businesses to acquire data management capacities to handle huge volumes of data that are being generated. India is a strategic market in the digital ecosystem. With the availability of high bandwidth speed, low power tariffs, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and the presence of hyperscalers together will trigger the high growth of the datacenter market in India. Moreover, solution delivery models like as-a-service, pay-per-use and built-to-suit will emerge and acquire greater market share in the coming months of 2022

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Automation of Datacenters and Growing Market in India - NewsPatrolling

With credit cards, Smith notes that you can set up autopay for a certain amount to guarantee that you pay at least the minimum or set a higher amount to pay down any accumulated debt. You can use pay-minimum automation to ensure youre never late, then make additional payments throughout the billing cycle to lower your credit usage and help your credit score.

CLOSELY REVIEW ALL CHARGES

Erin Lowry, author of the Broke Millennial book series, recommends checking to be sure payments were made. She had been automating her rent payment for six years when she noticed her payments stopped processing earlier this year.

I never had an issue so had gotten a little lazy about checking to see if it went through, she says. Then she realized she had a much larger bank balance than she expected. She discovered her rent had stopped processing a problem she had to scramble to fix.

Automating a bill also doesnt mean that you should stop shopping around for better options. Franco-Cicero, who is also a wealth advisor at Tobias Financial Advisors in Plantation, Florida, says that when it comes to car insurance, for example, its worth checking for discounts and comparing options each time your policy is up for renewal.

AUTOMATE SAVINGS, WITH MANUAL TWEAKS

In addition to signing up to automate retirement contributions every paycheck, Mason suggests automatic savings for other goals. Every time he cuts costs to free up extra cash, he says, I try to capture it immediately so it doesnt get lost in the shuffle. He cautions that youll want to review the savings regularly and make sure you have enough money in your checking account to support the transfers, along with all of your other bills.

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Palmer: Spring-clean finances with some automation - The Columbian