Category Archives: Automation

Florida-based smart, cognitive computing company, Martins Software & Automation, Inc., launches Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc., a split-off of its drone manufacturing division

The team at Martins Software & Automation, Inc., led by the forward-thinking Timothy Costello, has taken another giant stride towards delivering the latest tech solutions to as many people as possible as the company splits off its drone division into Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc. in a related development, Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc. has introduced Agraria Tuono, a solution already described as the future of green drone technology.

Splitting this division from the parent company will allow us to maximize this division potential, and fully develop our hydrogen fuel-cell powered agricultural drone Agraria Tuono, UAV survey & surveillance drones Fulmine and drone systems. We are very excited to be at this moment in our companys history after three-plus years of hard work, we are still discussing the various possibilities & capabilities of this split-off company, said Chairman, Timothy Costello stated.

There has been a steady increase in the demand for drone technology, as businesses as well as individuals, seek to explore the immense features and benefits of the solution. A recent report published by BCC Research revealed that the global market for drone technology was valued at $30.0 billion in 2020, with a projection that it will hit $54.6 billion by 2025. However, Martins Software & Automation, Inc. looks to take the user-experience to another level while exploring the limitless potentials of the technology as substantiated with the recent creation of Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc.

Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc. was spun- off from Martins Software & Automation, Inc. in November 2021 to develop the flagship Agrarian Tuono agricultural hydrogen fuel cell-powered automated drone prototype. The move will facilitate the goal of delivering more ground-breaking drone technology solutions for different purposes across industries.

For more information about Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc. and the solutions offered, visit http://www.prometheusair.com/.

About Prometheus Automated Drone Flight System, Inc.

Prometheus Automated Drone System, Inc. was created as a split-off from Martin Software & Automation, Inc. in November 2021. The core business of the company is to provide low-cost hydrogen fuel cell-powered UAV drones, and flight systems for agricultural, resource, forestry, survey, military, and EMS industries.

Disclaimer

This press release does not constitute any offer to sell, nor any solicitation of any offer and it is for general information, and announcement purposes of Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain matters discussed within this press release are forward-looking statements. Although Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc. believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc does not undertake any duty to update any statements contained herein (including any forward-looking statements), except as required by law. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include general industry considerations, regulatory changes, changes in local or national economic conditions and other risks.

Media ContactCompany Name: Prometheus Automated Drone Flight System, Inc. Contact Person: Media RelationsEmail: Send EmailCountry: United StatesWebsite: prometheusair.com

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Martins Software & Automation, Inc. Splits Off Into Prometheus Automated Drone Systems, Inc. - Digital Journal

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Decisions, the global automation standard for America's greatest brands, added Michele Cunningham as a new Vice President, leading marketing. Michele will focus on brand, communications, lead generation, and product and industry marketing to broadcast Decisions' thought leadership in the intelligent process automation space.

"We've a people-first, product-centric, straight talk culture at Decisions," said CEO Bob Irwin. "Decisions is built on the strength, character, and commitment of people. Our culture is the foundation of our success. Michele's commitment to leadership, extensive experience, and enthusiasm for people make her a perfect fit."

Michele will focus on driving innovative solutions, creating new revenue streams and enhancing customer experience. "Decisions is blazing a trail in process automation, helping companies to realize the tremendous value to be gained by automating and elevating business processes," Michele said. "I am excited to join the Decisions team and to contribute to their growth and momentum. And the best part is that we are just getting started."

Michele joins Decisions from Catalyte where she led the marketing organization, including brand strategy, digital and social marketing, communications, and demand generation. Prior to Catalyte she was the marketing leader for Element Fleet Management, Williams Scotsman and THINQ. Michele is a proud graduate of The University of Virginia and resides in Baltimore, MD.

About DecisionsDecisions, one complete solution for all your automation needs, is the global automation standard for Fortune 2000 financial services and healthcare companies in America. Customers use our intelligent process automation (IPA) platform to write applications, create automations, and build robots to fix the customer experience, modernize legacy applications, and automate anything and everything in their business. Whether writing your own applications or using ours, creating your own automations or using ours, and whether building your own robots or using ours, Decisions is the global automation standard for America's greatest brands. Visit Decisions.com to learn more.

SOURCE Decisions

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Decisions Expands Executive Team to Drive Growth and Customer Experience - PRNewswire

Like other industries, the fintech industry is also facing challenges with hiring and retaining talent. In this article, Jackie Siqueiros, head of people, Ocrolus, discusses how automation can help in this situation.

In the current business environment, where the challenge of finding and retaining employees for repetitive manual data entry roles has paralyzed some companies, many are turning to robots to compete. This is occurring in industries in the midst of a digital transformation, with finance one of the most affected. It led one financial organization CEO to say that, Never in my 40 plus years in banking have I seen labor shortages at the level theyre at now.

Vacancies are at a ten-year high in the United States. Companies across industries are simply finding it difficult to meet their staffing needs in the current business landscape. Along with more specialist roles, companies also have trouble filling the more entry-level and repetitive data entry roles. While specialist roles are difficult to replace, rote data entry can easily be pushed to robots, and many companies are doing just that with great success.

In the financial industry specifically, proactive organizations have integrated robotic process automation and other AI-driven technologies to plug a range of operational role gaps.

Getting back to full productivity has been a huge challenge for many organizations. According to a Manpower survey, 69% of American companies face significant hiring challenges. In the UK, employers are facing the most severe shortage of job candidates on record, and according to Bloomberg, the EUs staffing shortage is set to be worse than the USs.

The most worrying aspect of the global hiring problem is that it is only going to get worse. According to a report by Korn Ferry, by 2030, there could be 85 million global vacancies for much-needed roles, amounting to $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenues.

See More: Year 2022: Embracing the Wave of Automation

The pandemic accelerated the shift to automation across industries. For example, many banks and other financial service providers moved onboarding and common query services almost exclusively online using smart AI chatbots. Manufacturing and retail have also turned to robots. According to the Financial Times, Warehouses are expected to invest $36bn in automation this year, up 20% in 2020.

Traditionally, important yet repetitive and rote tasks such as manual data entry, document onboarding, and other time-consuming administrative work have been given to entry-level workers for low pay, often leading to a drain on employee morale. Another issue with having these processes manned by human workers is the chance for error. For the financial industry, human error is particularly problematic as it can lead to organizations falling foul of Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering regulatory compliance.

Luckily, companies are recognizing these dangers and moving more processes toward automation. According to a recent report by PwC in partnership with CBI, 89% (of financial organizations) expect to automate standardized or repetitive tasks over the next five years. Further, 74% are actively searching for candidates to fulfill future labor needs to do with data science, automation, and digitization more broadly.

Not only is automation advanced enough to step in for more rote, humdrum work, but it can actually improve productivity, as well as lower costs. After all, robots arent susceptible to energy peaks and troughs, they arent biased, and they dont need breaks or vacation time. However, it doesnt mean that automation is replacing human workers.

Rather, automation can enable people to focus on core, high-value tasks without spending large amounts of time on time-consuming, repetitive work. Instead of looking to automation to replace employees, savvy financial organizations are integrating it strategically to plug operational gaps and act as a complementary technological capability to help and enable their workforce.

See More: 6 Reasons Developers Are in Such High Demand Right Now

Robotic process automation (RPA) can cut financial organizations costs by up to 75%, according to KPMG. There is also a positive correlation between robot adoption and productivity gains. According to a report by Select USA, an increase of one percent robot density generates productivity gains of 0.8%, whereas organizations new to robotic adoption witness a 5.1% productivity increase.

Financial organizations are increasingly aware of how to best combine their human workforce with robotic solutions to drive productivity and help employees focus on core areas of their roles and are able to address their document processing automation requirements with a full-scale automation solution, empowering underwriters and other knowledge workers to make faster, more accurate lending decisions.

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The Great Resignation and Growing Importance of Automation in Fintech - Toolbox

BELGRADE, Mt. Made in the U.S.A: Its a title thats tough to achieve. But, the easy way is no way to build a company if you ask Wiley Davis.

We kind of have a joke that we don't do anything the easy way around here, laughed Davis, the CEO and co-founder of Go Fast Campers.

If we want to consider ourselves a nation of problem solvers, we actually have to do the hard work, said the entrepreneur and inventor.

The work hes doing today was just a dream a few years ago. In 2016, Davis was on his usual Christmas camping trip in Mexico when he had an idea.

I'm 64 and the Tacoma I drove, even though it was a long bed, it was only 6 feet. I spent a lot of time in Mexico over the years sort of sleeping in the back of a truck with the tailgate open and my feet poking out of the camper shell.

As the inventor drove back home, he came up with a concept: a camper tall enough to stand in that is lightweight but strong.

The goal wasn't just to make a camper, it was to figure out, OK, how do you sort of leverage all these neat kind of amazing automation tools that exist now at a very small scale?

He opened up a warehouse and manufacturing center for Go Fast Campers in Belgrade, Montana, just outside of Bozeman. He and his neighbor designed a pop-up camper that is permanently attached to your car.

It's meant to be the bare minimum that you need to be able to set up camp quickly, sleep comfortably and tear down camp quickly, said Davis.

Most importantly, he wanted it built in America.

"Obviously, we care very much about making a great camper. But, we also care a lot about building up the knowledge of how to how to solve problems in this country and to not just sort of offload that responsibility onto other people," said Davis.

From making two campers a week, to now 40 a week, the team uses robots and automation to make their own bolts, screws and camper frames.

"It effectively amplifies the value of someone's time," said Davis of automation. "Somebody who is running a set of automated tools produces a lot more in a unit of time than somebody who isn't."

Willy Totten oversees all the automated production.

"I kind of show up in the morning and fix all the problems," said Totten.

Investing more in these machines this year has helped Go Fast Campers make it through the pandemic supply chain shortages a little easier.

"Having that automation kind of gives us more space to weather the storm in some ways. We have everything in-house," said Totten.

Yet, its still tough to get the raw materialseven from local suppliers.

"Some days, it feels like, 'What are we going to run out of today?'" joked Davis. "Then, it sort of becomes a fun game that at least you can mildly enjoy while you play it."

The real enjoyment for this business owner comes from building a successful team thats paid well for their work.

Productivity is going up, but wages generally aren't, said Davis. So, what we're trying to do is tie those two together to say as we essentially make money, everybody is going to get paid more. The goal is to actually make the base pay eventually somewhere around $70,000 to $80,000."

The management team here has a promise: they won't get a raise until all employees do.

"I was like, 'I'm never going to find a job locally to do that.' When this opportunity came up, I just leaped at it," said Totten.

The pay scale and American manufacturing make the campers more expensive, but customers are happy to pay it.

Its all about keeping it in our country, keeping it local and really supporting people here," said Chris, who drove from Texas to get his Go Fast Camper installed on his pickup truck. "I'd rather spend a little extra money here, get a better quality product and be able to see the people who are putting it together.

And with relentless, home-grown innovation, Davis hopes these campers are just the start of his teams success.

"That, to me, would be kind of the ultimate picture of success is that we helped show a lot of people that taking on these hard problems is a great way to earn a living and a great way to live a life," Davis said.

If you'd like to check out the products Go Fast Campers creates, click HERE.

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Camper company invests in automation during pandemic to keep production in the U.S. - The Denver Channel

An average-sized package traveling through one of FedEx Ground's automated facilities requires human contact at only two points: unloading and loading.

"When they're taken off the truck on the unload side, they go through the conveyors and through the whole sortation system," Ted Dengel, FedEx Ground managing director of operations technology and innovation, said in an interview. "Then, they get loaded onto a trailer on the other side for the second touch."

FedEx Ground has more than 150 fully automated facilities in its network after adding 16 ahead of the peak holiday shipping season. Fewer steps involving manual inputs are vital for the company to keep service levels high amid a challenging labor environment and a boom in e-commerce volume since the COVID-19 pandemic began. FedEx as a whole is expected to deliver 100 million more holiday packages than in 2019.

But some of these packages won't be able to travel through a fully automated sortation system due to their unwieldy dimensions. As consumers become more comfortable ordering anything and everything online, FedEx is encountering more oddly-sized items like furniture, tires and televisions that don't mesh well with its automated facilities.

"Robotic arms do the same thing over and over and over really well," Dengel said. "But in our world, every transaction is almost a different challenge for the robot. So we started looking at other ways on how to combine bulk material handling and some robotics to try and get the throughput we needed to match what humans could do, as well as to handle the variability."

FedEx's recent automation investments targeted what Dengel calls the package bell curve. The majority of the carrier's volume that constitutes the middle of the curve can be handled through automated sorters. But the ends of the curve the smallest and largest-sized packages have always been handled in a more manual fashion.

These investments allow FedEx to redeploy its employees into other facility areas, giving it more operational flexibility in a time of high shipping demand. Berkshire Grey's Robotic Product Sortation and Identification systems, for example, match the human throughput of roughly 1,000 packages sorted per hour while also being "practically 100% accurate" in their sortations, Dengel said.

The consistent efficiency of warehouse robotics, spikes in demand and difficulties hiring enough frontline workers is accelerating interest in automation since the pandemic took hold.

"Now at least when I hear about warehouses and robotics, it's a very immediate short-term mindset to fulfill a very immediate need with the labor shortage," said John Seidl, a partner at GreyOrange, in October. "The mindset of a lot of your clients nowadays is pretty different than what it was earlier."

FedEx rival UPS is also pushing for greater automation in its network. Employees who load UPS' delivery vehicles will use wearable devices to eliminate 20 million manual scans a day, CEO Carol Tom said on the company's Q3 earnings call.

"When you think about the cool technology that we're going to introduce into our buildings automated label application, automated bagging, robotic induction into the package cars there's just a ton of opportunity here to drive automation in ways that we haven't done before," Tom said.

Greater levels of automation will help UPS and FedEx handle the deluge of packages more effectively. However, this can also introduce limitations within facilities when volume levels peak.

Berkshire Grey's Robotic Product Sortation and Identification Systems are stationed at FedEx Ground facilities in Queens, Columbia and Las Vegas.

Courtesy of FedEx

Automated facilities tend to have "a plateau you cannot exceed," said Todd Benge, senior vice president of parcel operations at Transportation Insight, in an October webinar. This means they can't simply add more employees to increase the amount of packages they can handle per hour.

"The best thing to try to do as a customer is forecast the volume ahead of time and get it to the carriers and make good communication with the carriers" to see if they can meet the level of service required, Benge said.

FedEx works closely with its largest shippers to anticipate volume surges and avoid capacity constraints ahead of the busiest shipping days, Dengel said. The company's facilities also have ways to bolster their sortation capabilities they can extend package sortation periods at its facilities, reduce the hours between sorts and run more of them if warranted, he added. FedEx can push less time-sensitive deliveries to later sorts that aren't overwhelmed, as well.

"Really it's more about expanding the hours that we operate in a day as opposed to trying to cram more packages through a system that's already at capacity," Dengel said.

Beyond further robotics capabilities to better handle small and large packages, FedEx Ground is exploring ways to automate the trailer loading and unloading process, the only manual steps left for the core of the company's package volume.

"It's very tricky getting various kinds of packages on and off of a trailer in an autonomous fashion, so we're looking at different solutions there," Dengel said. "That's where I can see things going in the next five to ten years is really trying to solve those problems as well."

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The next step in FedEx's automation journey: Handling the largest and smallest packages - Supply Chain Dive

While we have seen significant development in the year 2020 and 2021, when it comes to automation, the year 2022 will be the year of automation surge. One thing is a fact and that is that automation has never seen any sort of stagnancy. We have beenwitnessingconstant innovation, change, growth and wider adoption when it comes to automation, across domains.

Technology is a segment that is seeing majority of the automation, even some of the top research agencies such as Gartner has substantiated. A recent survey conducted by Gartner states that more than 80% of organizations have indicated continuation or in some cases even increase their spend on automation. This is where CIOs are stepping in and leading the initiative so that they can define the strategy, governance (or process) and technology.

As we see more and more investment happening in this space, CIOs have to ensure that it is spent wisely and strategically. Hence, we will see CIOs getting themselves engrossed in addressing pertinent issues such as:

Additionally, they are also contributing effectively towards the revenue side of the business and taking their inputs on how automation can further enhance the revenue of the organization.

Those who have involved in this subject will be quite aware of the battle between various platforms who are fighting for the soul of automation technology. We players from every segment such as business process automation, to iPaaS players, low-code application platforms (LCAP), artificial intelligence platforms, robotic process automation players, have been inching forward to be on the hot seat or rather be the centra point of all automation technology.

The year 2022 will be the year where we will see various heads (CIOs per se) drive automation projects and work towards having a single technology platform for automation. There is already a perception built that RPA technology will emerge out to be a clear winner. We are already seeing a huge growth in RPA technology. According to a recent statistic by Gartner, RPA was already having a significant growth in the year 2020 where it was majorly used in enterprise software market; 38.9% rise to touch a staggering $1.9 billion in terms of revenues.

Then there are advanced RPA systems that are implemented to incorporate mission critical functionalities across enterprise such as governance, low/no-code development environments and provide support for scalability.

However, CIOs also know that RPAscannotdo everything under the roof. Thus, 2022 will be the year where RPA platforms will adopt two parallel channels.

Firstly, they will move to other avenues and look forward to integrating other platforms with their solution to make it a robust solution. Secondly, we will see a significant investment happening in the interoperability feature to the system. This means that from an adoption point of view, organizations can keep using their existing platform, and utilize RPA platform for management and governance.

Treading both paths will give an opportunity for RPA platforms to retain their position as core technology, and other automation platforms will merge into them.

In the current scenario, we can see that organizations have around 170 different applications that employees have to constantly toggle among these to get their work done. Because of this a considerable amount of time is spent in constant shift from one tool to another.

We are seeing innovation by many organizations where they are implementing digital desktop assistant or in plain language a robot for every individual. 2022 will see adoption of another automation layer on top of the existing applications that they are using. This layer of new automation platform will reside between employees and the business applications.

Typically,we see many enterprises get their work done by business applications such as Jira, shifting to Workday and then updating on Salesforce, and this goes on and on. However, in the year 2022, we will be seeing emergence of a new workflow model. Through this model, instead of employees going to multiple applications to execute their task, they will receive a series of JIT (just-in-time) tasks on their desktop, created by bots.

Having this approach will help people by freeing them from any sort of segmentation of work and constant shuffling between different applications. If we try to find an analogy of this mechanism, we can find it in the assembly line process that is adopted by the manufacturing sector. This is precisely the reason why 2024 will see around 25% of new employees in the development spectrum facing codeless development compared to multiple lines of codes that are written today to build applications.

The jobCoEswill be to drive high success rates and ensure achievement of ROI for every initiative around artificial intelligence. In a recent survey conducted among AI professionals, it was noted that 64% of them said that theirorganizationstook at least 1 month to implement any new AI model. On the other hand, the remainder of 20% said that theirorganizationstook 6 months and beyond to do the same. This is quite a huge disparity and a pretty lengthy timeline.

Hence, we are seeing automation to be the obvious choice fororganizationswho are quite behind this journey of new model adoption. Todays enterprise applications make sure that the AI models are very intuitive and fast so that the bots can quickly access the rules and build real time workflows for employees.

Year 2022 will be seen as the year whenorganizationswill bring AI into the framework to make the process of automation easy, fast and extremely lively and flexible than they were ever before.

Today we are seeing that developers in automation segment have to give specific instruction to robots to perform steps, more like a guided instruction. However, with semantic automation, this rule-based automation approach is completely eliminated. Robots build through semantic automation process can perform tasks simply observing these tasks and emulating them.

We are seeing tremendous amount ofcompartmentalizationin the storage space andorganizationsare adopting native cloud for both SaaS as well as non-SaaS platforms.

Though it is not a matter of top priority in the automation space, however, delivery does sometimes become a pertinent factor in selecting an automation platform. Today we see lot of options, flexibility and relatively less lock-in time provided by some of the players. This has caused a major stir in the market, and we see many players coming up with platforms that have SaaS and on-premise options with minimum disruption.

Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) as they are called join hands with CIOs to harness the power of automation for the larger objective.

If we look at numbers, some of the Fortune 500 companies have 95CSOs asof March 2021. The surprise element is the addition of one-third of these 95 happening in the year 2020. As we see a considerable effort bythis new breed of officers, who want to achieve their objectives, quite a few of them are understanding the potential of automation. It is not a surprise that today CIOs have collaborated with CSOs to drive automation projects in theorganization.

The year of 2022 will be the year of continuous and sustained growth across the business ecosystem. Follow these 8 Automation Trends with various functions which have intensified their efforts in their respective fields, and this has led to a significant surge in automation within their domain. Thus, the trajectory as of now is seeing an upward trend.

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Top 8 Automation Trends in 2022 | Techfunnel - TechFunnel

Nintex emerged as an Innovator for the DTM market in 2021, which is defined by Aragon Research as "technology providers with a best-in-class technology or service that differentiates them in their respective market" at the Aragon Research Awards Ceremony held virtually at the Aragon Engage conference on December 2. In recognition of its software innovation, Nintex was honored to also receive a Leader designation in three Aragon Research Globe Reports in 2021 for the following market categories: Digital Transaction Management, Digital Business Platforms (DBP), and Workflow and Content Automation (WCA).

"At Nintex, we are relentlessly focused on helping organizations digitally transform the way their people work by providing process automation management software solutions that combine power and ease of use," said Nintex CEO Eric Johnson. "As we look towards 2022, the global demand for automation technology will continue to increase as organizational leaders require digital solutions that deliver great experiences for their employees and customers."

Multiple channels recognize Nintex

Throughout 2021, Nintex has received numerous accolades for its software and company, one of the most recent being Seattle Business Magazine's recognition of the Nintex workplace and culture. Nintex achieved first place in the magazine's Washington's 2021 100 Best Companies To Work For program, based on anonymous survey data submitted by Nintex employees located in the region.

Nintex was also recognized by customers who provided feedback on technology in the market to help other buyers make educated purchasing decisions on peer-review sites, resulting in TrustRadius honoring Nintex with a 2021 Tech Cares Award for the second consecutive year. The program celebrates organizations that have contributed directly to combat COVID-19, either with their products, knowledge or financial support, and those that have gone above and beyond to provide strong Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs and workplace culture.

Earlier this year, the complete capabilities of the Nintex Process Platform, including Nintex Promappfor process mapping and management and Nintex Workflow forautomating business processes, achieved leader rankings in multiple 2021 G2 Grid Reports including Business Process Management (BPM), Process Mining, No-Code Development Platforms, and Rapid Application Development (RAD). The G2 Grid processes aggregate information from customer reviews to score software technology offerings by market presence, sentiment, and usability.

Additionally, Nintex's partner program was recognized by The Channel Company in the 2021 CRN Partner Program Guide as a five-star winner for the third consecutive year.

Customer success and product innovation remains a priority

Nintex's market momentum further accelerated with its June 2021 acquisition of eSignature provider AssureSign, which the company has now integrated with Nintex Workflow Cloud as a native eSign offering known as Nintex AssureSign, and announcing TPG Capital as its new majority investor in October 2021, positioning the company for significant growth.

Nintex Process Platform features and functionality highlights this year include:

To learn about working at Nintex and to view current job openings, visit http://www.nintex.com/careers/.

Media ContactKristin Treat Nintex[emailprotected]cell:+1(215) 317-9091

About NintexNintex is the global standard for process management and automation. Today more than 10,000 public and private sector organizations across 90 countries turn to the Nintex Platform to accelerate progress on their digital transformation journeys by quickly and easily managing, automating and optimizing business processes. Learn more by visiting http://www.nintex.com and experience how Nintex and its global partner network are shaping the future of Intelligent Process Automation (IPA).

Product or service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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Awards and Demand for Process Automation Software Propels Nintex into 2022 - PRNewswire

Ubiquitous in automation today, TwinCAT has served as a powerful resource for engineers since 1996. In addition, the underlying PC-based control technology from Beckhoff has been going strong since 1986, marking 35 years in the industry. TwinCAT, short for The Windows Control and Automation Technology, provides numerous benefits from its robust software functionality. The advantages of TwinCAT stem from its modular expandability extending to support for innovations such as integrated machine vision and artificial intelligence.

Since the 1996 introduction of the first software generation, TwinCAT 2, this product is still available and maintained, which is proof of its continuity and compatibility with current systems. Windows served as the operating system and the PLC programming was adapted to meet the requirements of the IEC 61131-3 standard. This introduced the ability to implement an industrial control system on a regular PC with a standard operating system.

Another milestone was the decision to align the TwinCAT programming environment with the worlds predominant IT programming environment. Microsoft Visual Studio is used for all major IT software developments, and Beckhoff also used this tool to develop TwinCAT 2 software. So why not develop PLC software applications with Visual Studio as well? The subsequent TwinCAT 3 software generation was introduced in 2010 and delivered to customers from 2011 on which makes for another 10-year anniversary and another track record of success in the field.

The integration of the TwinCAT automation tools into Visual Studio established a completely new type of engineering environment. With the availability to use additional programming standards such as C/C++ and MATLAB/Simulink, further possibilities emerged for more efficient code generation for machines and systems. This has also gained widespread acceptance in the automation industry.

In addition to programming, TwinCAT offers an I/O configuration interface for a wide variety of fieldbus systems first and foremost EtherCAT as well as more than 30 other communication protocols. Motion control applications from simple PTP movements to sophisticated CNC and robot kinematics are just as much part of the ongoing evolution as safety functions, image processing for machine vision and machine learning. With the advent of Industrie 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), it quickly became clear that the cloud, long established in IT, would also become a major factor in the automation market. To provide this functionality for customers, Beckhoff launched hardware and software solutions for IoT and cloud connectivity in 2015, followed by data analytics tools in 2018.

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Beckhoff 's TwinCAT Automation Software Turns 25 - Packaging World

Flexibility, IIoT, lead times, and cost for small manufacturers were all mentioned as challenges to implementing automation in their operations. These issues were discussed by CPGs and OEMs at PMMIs Top to Top Summit.

Top to Top Summit is an annual three-day networking event of high-level executives in the packaging and processing industry, who meet to discuss industry problems and solutions with the aim of improving industry outcome. Sponsored by PMMI, this years meeting (the 15th annual) was held in conjunction with PACK EXPO Las Vegas.

The lack of flexibility in many current automation solutions was a key challenge mentioned. End users are struggling with a lack of common components and industry-wide standards, as well as with automation kits that cannot easily integrate with leading ERP or warehouse management systems (WMSs). As a solution, one CPG called for defining universal standards that could be agreed upon by both CPGs and OEMs.

Since many automation solutions are currently run as closed systems, a result is that end users are dependent on the supplier for technical support. The adoption of open architectures would allow for technical support (and continuous improvement activities) to be managed in-house where desired. Also, current automation machinery is often designed to do only one thing and therefore isnt flexible enough to meet changing customer needs.

Issues related to the IIoT and Industry 4.0 were also mentioned, such as the challenge of collecting data, and of cybersecurity. Several end users called for help in being able to understand return on investment in order to justify the funding for new technologies. Also, the need to stay up to date on what new technologies such as AR, VR, and the IoT have to offer was mentioned.

Lead times on automated machinery, which currently can be lengthy and therefore do not help in terms of addressing immediate labor shortages, was another challenge that was addressed. One OEM cited strong demand and serious supply chain issues as the reason for these extended lead times, with a CPG response that OEMs need to be more creative in machine design, using alternative components when supply chain issues cause delays. Some CPGs requested that their OEMs work more closely with them to form partnerships.

The high cost of automation solutions, particularly when it comes to automating small-scale production lines where cost often make it unfeasible, is another challenge. A suggestion in response to this issue was to have leasing agreements.

Download a FREE copy of this report below to read more about these discussions.

Source: PMMI Business Intelligence, Key Challenges for Packaging and Processing Operations.

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Key Challenges to Using Automation in Packaging and Processing Operations - Healthcare Packaging

The two companies also plan to expand EY's neurodiversity efforts and build a ServiceNow Neurodiversity Delivery Center.

Image: alphaspirit, Getty Images/iStockphoto

EY and ServiceNow are expanding an existing partnership to bring cloud solutions and more automation to the tax and finance industry, the companies announced this week. The companies also plan to take on the tech labor shortage by opening up more training opportunities to neurodiverse individuals. EY expects the partnership to support a $1 billion business by 2025.

Paul D. Webb, EY Global Alliance Leader for ServiceNow, said that the partnership combines industry expertise with a leading cloud platform.

"We innovate together to deliver workflow automation that enables better connectivity across systems, drives greater resource efficiency and delivers seamless human-centric processes," Webb said.

Both companies will develop new offerings aimed at streamlining complex enterprise operations, with a focus on finance and tax services. EY was an early adopter of ServiceNow, but the official alliance relationship was established in 2014.

Bill McDermott, ServiceNow CEO, said in a press release that leaders in every industry recognize their technology architecture is their business architecture.

"The EY organization's deep functional and industry vertical experience will help accelerate adoption of the ServiceNow platform," McDermott said.

Carmine Di Sibio, EY global chairman and CEO, said in a press release that the expanded partnership will improve automation and efficiency for EY and ServiceNow clients.

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EY clients will have access to ServiceNow Customer Workflows and Creator Workflows, which power managed services for Tax and Payroll outsourcing and Wealth Management, as part of the partnership.

EY research found that 83% of senior global executives expect finance professionals to shift from technical focus to data, process and technology skills over the next three years.

Webb said that this trend is central to business agility as organizations become more dynamic and can focus on innovation to drive business performance and growth. Process optimization, data analysis and mining, and the ServiceNow partnership are part of that transformation.

As part of the global program, EY will expand its existing EY Neurodiverse Centers of Excellence and establish the ServiceNow Neurodiversity Delivery Center. The program will train participants for technology roles, including developers, testing analysts and consultants. The companies plan to launch the program in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India over the next six months, following the initial U.S. launch.

The EY/ServiceNow alliance is not the only one that will shape the finance and banking industry in 2022. Nick Starai, chief strategy officer at NMI, a payments enablement company, predicts that 2022 will bring more partnerships and even mergers between independent sales organizations and independent software vendors.

"As independent software vendors (ISVs) become more deeply ingrained in payments and independent sales organizations (ISOs) in software, the line between the two will continue to blur as both sides find benefits in expanding their offerings beyond just software or payments, respectively," Starai said.

ISOs have historically built profitable businesses by selling payment processing services, but as these services became commoditized, ISOs evolved their business models to include software into their offerings, according to Starai.

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This allows ISOs to create stickier solutions and opens additional business channels with merchants that have a higher and more consistent processing volume of payments.

"As ISOs move into software development, ISVs are becoming more ingrained in the payment process to offer additional recurring revenue streams beyond software licenses," he said.

This tactic also allows ISVs to provide a variety of cutting-edge payment features in their software stack.

"With ISVs embracing fintech, they can add payments data to their volume of customer data by selecting the right payments partner who offers fast and simple API integration alongside full commerce enablement," Starai said.

He expects ISOs and ISVs to continue to converge as both sides become more knowledgeable in the additional software and offerings they can provide their merchant customers to create a more seamless experience.

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EY and ServiceNow combine forces to build automation solutions for the financial industry and a $1B business - TechRepublic