Category Archives: Automation

Allied Electronics & Automationexpanded its suppliers in November withKIPPintools and hardwareproducts;Nachi America Hydraulicsinpneumatics and fluid controlofferings; andMurrplastikadding products in thewire and cablecategories. The new suppliers further expand Allied's linecard of more than 550 world-class suppliers.Newproducts from these suppliers arenowavailable atwww.alliedelec.com.

Allied's recently added suppliersinclude the following:

Allied also continues to add products and suppliers to itsfacilities cleaning and maintenance inventory.As part of its focus on improving the customer experience, Allied will continue to expand its product portfolio throughout 2021 and beyond to meet customers' wide-ranging needs. In 2020, the company added more than 50new best-in-class suppliersto its linecard, bringing more than 10,000 new ready-to-ship product lines to customers. Allied has also recentlydoubled the capacity of its Fort Worth distribution centerand provides online customers with tens of thousands of360-degree high-resolution images, more than1.1 million up-to-date product data sheets,expert adviceon a wide range of topics,anda connection to the company's globalDesignSparkfree online engineering collaboration platform.

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Allied Electronics & Automation Expand Product Offerings in November - Automation World

Automating for the sake of automating accomplishes little in the way of supply chain optimization.

People have become obsessed with these automation messages about digital brokerages, Loadsmart co-founder and co-CEO Felipe Capella told FreightWaves. Often when you automate the internal inefficiencies of a brokerage, there is no added value to the shippers or carriers. [Shippers and carriers] dont care about your inefficiencies. We need to start talking about the value proposition [of digital brokerages] to shippers and carriers.

Adding value was the reason for Loadsmarts recent strategic moves, according to Capella.

An example of Loadsmarts value-added approach is its August announcement that it is working with Home Depot to revolutionize the home improvement retailers approach toward its overall supply chain capabilities.

Capella explained that Home Depot recently started sourcing its own transportation for vendors to leverage its large flatbed footprint. Instead of vendors selling their products to Home Depot with added transportation costs, the retailer now routes shipments with its own dedicated capacity.

Often when fleets are dedicated to a one shipper like this, carriers find themselves charging more to cover a likely empty backhaul. Using Loadsmarts supply-led platform Flatbed Messenger, Home Depot can now find its carriers backhauls, driving down their transportation costs.

Home Depots flatbed transportation spend is going to keep growing aggressively over the next two or three years, said Capella. Home Depot was smart enough to see that in order for them to benefit from that growth, they should leverage the needed capacity for other shippers. If you have a truck delivered at Home Depot that is constantly backhauling empty, you have an opportunity to get them a load, bringing down costs for both shipments, which goes directly to your bottom line.

While Capella said creating the automated technology behind the solution was not easy, the forward-thinking, supply-led option is an example of how digital freight providers should be using technology with their customers, adding value to the shipper-broker relationship.

Capella said Loadsmart also is investing in its carriers, which have concerns around wait times and the decision-making processes behind choosing loads. Instead of building these products in-house, Loadsmart leaned on its investors to acquire the value-adding products for its carrier network.

We cannot build every technology by ourselves, he said. We have tremendous support from our investors to try to identify solutions out there that add value to our customers including our carriers.

In early November, Loadsmart announced it had acquired two solutions, trucking management system Kamion and warehouse dock scheduling software Opendock to help carriers improve their overall operations.

Capella said these acquisitions give Loadsmart tools to enable carriers to grow their businesses with Kamion and provide shippers scheduling software through Opendock.

Opendock currently runs around 600,000 appointments per month, he said. We have customers that give us their demand by API as well, so now we know what trucks are arriving to a specific warehouse at any given time and we can match this to a shipment coming out of that warehouse, eliminating deadhead.

When it comes to Kamion, we now have a full platform for carriers to run their whole business on, Capella said. Small carriers in particular wake up and open up 10 different load boards trying to match their trucks up with shipments. Carriers can have that load board data sent directly to them through Kamion.

He explained that with Kamion, carriers will have the option to see loads that arent organized by Loadsmart, and the loads that are being offered by Loadsmart will include transparency into its fixed 8% margin for Kamion.

In order to build better trust with our carriers, we decided to fix our margin, making us one of the first brokers to be completely transparent with how much money they are making, he said. I think one of the biggest issues this industry has is this competition between people that should be collaborating and this is our way of fostering a new sense of collaboration.

Capella has been leading Loadsmart in its value-adding mission since the companys inception in 2015.

When we first started Loadsmart, we launched our instant pricing system that booked loads via the web. And guess what? Everyone is doing instant pricing and instant booking via APIs [application programming interfaces], he said. We would love to start this new trend of value-focused initiatives for shippers and carriers and see brokers and 3PLs move in that same direction.

But Capella believes that is easier said than done for his competition and that getting the entire brokerage industry on the same page will take time.

We have a tech team of 160 people today and I think very few brokers out there have this kind of large team that can build a cloud-based technology infrastructure that allows you to absorb new technology. Its actually pretty complicated to build, he said.

Making these changes is a marathon, not a sprint. But I think leaders should realize that youre not going to get a lot of benefit by trying to build volume with negative margins. The goal here is to be focused on value-adding technology and cloud adoption, not in volume building.

Loadsmart continues growth strategy with flatbed offering

F3 chat: Solving supply chain challenges through data solutions

Big Tech executives find new frontier in FreightTech

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Loadsmart challenges brokers to offer more than automation - FreightWaves

MONTREAL A recent report shows that enterprises are lagging in the adoption of automation.

The report by Syntax reveals a critical reality check on perception versus reality among IT and finance decision-makers when it comes to enterprise innovation, according to Syntax this month.

Syntax released the report this month: Innovation Reality Check: A Crisis of Overconfidence in IT.

The business landscape continues to shift as hybrid work moves into a more permanent position, emerging technologies require skilled workers, and cyber attacks continue to climb.

IT leaders who overestimate their capabilities find themselves at risk of missing out on critical innovation.

As we stand at an inflection point in the way the world does business, enterprises have more opportunities than they think to get ahead of the competition and continue improving, saidMike Rulf, CTO of Americas at Syntax.

An honest assessment of capabilities now will only accelerate innovation in the future.

Syntax surveyed 500 U.S.-based senior management leaders managing at least$500Min revenue to assess where their technology and business analytics capabilities fall on a spectrum.

The Innovation Reality Check: A crisis of overconfidence in IT is available online.

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Less Than 50% of Enterprises Have Automated Processes - Datamation

The startup promises to change workloads for the better.

Aharon Chernin is no newbie to the world of managed service providers. Last year, Perch Security, the entrepreneurs successful five-year-old, 24/7 cybersecurity operation, was acquired by Tampa-based ConnectWise. Now, Chernin is in the startup cycle again, this time with $3.5 million in backing to create Rewst. The new venture which will launch the first quarter of 2022 streamlines robotic process automation, or RPA.

Rewst (pronounced Roost) is a SaaS company that focuses entirely on MSPs.

Chernin, who is CEO, spoke to us about what makes Rewst unique, what drives his work ethic, and why its important to simplify RPA technology to make it more accessible to all.

Channel Futures: Whats it like creating a startup and one specifically for MSPs?

Rewsts Aharon Chernin

Aharon Chernin: Starting a startup is not fun. Youre basically willing a company into existence. And you must have some greater goal in mind and that goal cant be money. It has to be a bigger goal, and for me its the MSPs, who are like my people. I worked in a ton of different industries and the MSPs are the most down-to-earth, real folks out there. So, whenever theyre happy, it makes me happy. Ive got this desire to make sure folks are happy. Its like my operating system.

CF: How did you establish the idea for Rewst?

AC: When I started Perch, we didnt have a 24/7 security operations center (SOC), at least not for the first year. There werent a lot of 24/7 SOCs with security information and event management (SIEM) out there already. So the entire industry was learning at the same time. However, one of the things that we learned is that while MSPs were reselling 24/7 SOC, they didnt have a 24/7 SOC on their end for us to escalate to.

For example, if there was an incident, they may not have had a security person working at 3 a.m. to receive that information. I started to notice a pattern of what we were escalating, and I realized a lot of it could be automated. And those were the early thoughts about what Rewst might be. There are already SOCs and SIEMs out there. However, no one has ever built an automation platform like Rewst before. It was really enticing.

CF: Why hasnt robotic process automation been adopted to a greater degree?

AC: I dont feel RPA has been figured out yet. You can tell that by the adoption. I would say every fortune 500 company has RPA in some way. If you look at the count of companies that exist in the U.S. or North America, its way greater than 500. And the adoption of RPA in those companies is very limited. Most of these companies are taken care of by MSPs, and only somewhere between 2% and 5% of MSPs use RPAs. Its not the MSPs fault. Its the RPA industrys fault. They think theyve simplified automation; however, they havent simplified it enough because it hasnt moved down market. Just because youre simplifying something doesnt mean youre trying to dumb it down.

CF: Will Rewst make it financially feasible for MSPs to adopt greater automation?

AC: It goes back to the money thing. Money is such an easy thing to point the finger at. Theyre not buying it because its too expensive. In my experience cost is a factor, but its not the primary factor. For example, if it costs $10,000 for a product but you need to hire an employee at $150,000 to use the product, then the cost might be prohibitive. Yes, we want to keep the price low, but price isnt

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Aharon Chernin Creates Startup Rewst to Improve Automation for MSPs - Channel Futures

The No Surprises Act (NSA) goes into effect on January 1, 2022. We know what this means for patientsa welcome reprieve from unexpected medical bills arising from circumstances beyond their control. But what about other stakeholders, like insurance companies? One of the provisions of the No Surprises Act requires health plans to update their provider directories more frequently. This gets to the root cause of surprise billing, which is patients ability to easily identify which providers are in-network. If payers can make updates to their directories in just 48 hours, as the law mandates, patients will have a much better chance of finding care thats actually covered by their plans.

Sounds reasonable, right?

Except for the fact that health plans are processing an avalanche of provider data at any given time. And the data are not streaming in seamlessly through a shared platform between payers and providers. Payers are literally receiving Excel spreadsheets from hundreds of different provider groups, each with their own unique and ever-changing templates. The data is so messy that all plans have dedicated staff whose job is to assess, interpret, clean up, and then enter it into the plans system. Its no surprisepun intendedthat these updates can take weeks, cost millions of dollars a year, and still have accuracy rates as low as 60%. Thats hugely problematic, since plans rely on this information not only to update their provider directories, but also to determine which providers should be paid contracted rates, for specialty and licensing updates, and for billing information changes that are necessary to properly pay claims.

While historically it has been challenging for payers to solve for all these issues, recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence now make it possible to automate the millions of human hours spent cleansing and keying in this data every year, as well as improve its accuracy. Think of it this way: landscapers have machines that help them shovel, so they can focus on making a yard beautiful. And to give an example from another industry in which human lives are on the line, pilots make all the flying decisions, not the planes.

These are two examples of technology that help humans safely and easily perform large amounts of work. If plans use those technologies, they will not only achieve compliance with the No Surprises Act, they will also be empowered to get employees back to their core business: keeping members healthy.

How payers should be thinking about automation

There are three main things to keep in mind over the next few months as health insurers consider leveraging automation to help them comply with the No Surprise Act.

January 1, 2022 may seem like its still far away, but factoring in upcoming holidays and the time off that people typically take in the fourth quarter of the year, the No Surprises Act deadline is practically around the corner. Payers that want to be in compliance with its provider directory provision must act now.

Photo: fizkes, Getty Images

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Preparing for the No Surprises Act: How automation can help solve the provider directory problem - MedCity News

Waiters, inspectors, receptionists, and groundskeepers beware. A new HSBC Global Research report found that these types of jobs each has a greater than 90% chance of being displaced due to automation within roughly the next 10 years.

Each of these types of work were given an Automation Risk Score of over 90% (out of 100) in the report and were listed among the jobs in todays economy most likely to be lost to robots.

Jobs at risk of automation: HSBC

Mid-skill jobs which require training but little education have been the most likely to be replaced thus far, the report said. Food preparation, cleaning, driving, were the occupations with the highest mean probability of automation, according to OECD data cited in the report, which was written by Economist James Pomeroy and ESG Analyst Amy Tyler.

This makes sense these are roles that are typically low-skilled enough to be able to create the hardware or software needed to save the employment cost but high enough paid to justify building the robot. In supermarkets, whilst checkouts have seen a much greater use of technology, shelf- stacking hasnt (cheap workers) and neither have store managers (not possible to do easily), Pomeroy said in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

The automation of jobs has continued throughout the pandemic, as social distancing requirements have made some tasks more easily performed by robots. The pandemic has accelerated the slow march towards automation of many roles, the authors wrote. Shortages in the labor market have left many employers desperate for workers, human or otherwise. The great labour shortages that have arisen all over the world have incentivized firms to invest in new processes to allow them to keep meeting higher demand without seeing costs spiral.

The macroeconomic picture painted by the report was mixed. On the one hand, it is certain that jobs have been lost and will continue to be lost as a direct result of automation. On the other hand, certain jobs will be created by the technologies and improved production resulting from automation, the economists predict.

[The speed by which jobs are displaced by automation] will vary a little bit... partly in terms of the ability to make those robots and how quickly that happens, Pomeroy said. But also, I think there's a cultural element of how willing we are to have certain jobs done by robots.

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Consumers derive satisfaction from seeing certain services performed by humans, he noted, and thus it would be unlikely to see robots taking over these jobs in the near future. However, shifts in the culture and public opinion could allow for automation to become a reality even in these industries.

So the best example that I'm always giving is, you could make a robot today that can cut hair, Pomeroy said. But if you set up a robot hairdressing salon, in any city in the world, I doubt it is going to be very busy.

The main obstacle to automation, in this case, he said is that no one likes blades being near their head, controlled by a robot.

However, this cultural preference may change over time as the public becomes less hesitant regarding greater automation in personal care services.

What could theoretically happen over the course of the next few years is there might be a growing acceptance of people going, Well, why wouldn't I let a robot cut my hair? Pomeroy said. And then suddenly those jobs could get automated.

A 2020 report on jobs from the World Economic Forum predicted that by 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by automation, yet 97 million new roles may emerge.

Over the medium term, jobs may be lost particularly in those sectors where automation is relatively easy or affordable, Pomeroy and Tyler wrote in the HSBC report. Manufacturing, retail and logistics jobs may be the most at risk based on a wide-range of research, whilst some roles may be more immune those that require skills that automated processes cant do so well: idea generation, problem-solving, or people management. Equally, new technologies may spur the creation of entirely new roles or industries that could employ even more people possibly in better roles than those lost elsewhere.

Nearly half of all workers in the U.S. are employed in low-wage work. Millions are truck drivers, retail workers in brick-and-mortar stores, food servers, and receptionists. Many of these could be performed by robots with current technology, Pomeroy said, but it has not yet become cost-efficient to do so.

If you think about the level of the cost of building a robot to do a job, he said. And you think about the cost of employing someone to do that job, until they cross over, there's no point automating them. And for a long, long time, the cost of that robot has been X and the cost of employing someone has been Y; Y is considerably lower than X in this environment.

Camello, an autonomous grocery delivery robot, makes its way during a delivery in Singapore April 6, 2021. REUTERS/Edgar Su REFILE - CORRECTING NAME OF ROBOT

Even if, in the aggregate, more work is created, problems may still arise regarding job preparedness among the general population as well as the quality of those jobs. The money-making opportunities resulting from technology-induced increases in productivity may not provide the same security and fulfillment of previous occupations.

A lot more people are going to have ways of making money that aren't necessarily employment in the traditional sense, Pomeroy said. So it's going to be people who are doing things by themselves. Technology allows self employment to happen much more quickly. You can see this in the boom in YouTubers, or Twitch streamers, or cryptocurrency traders [and] podcasters. So you could see jobs being created, but you also could see ways of making money being created that aren't necessarily jobs that distort some of the labor market statistics, too.

'Menkian' a famous Tech TikToker and twitch streamer builds a PC live during the last day of the SOFA (Salon del Ocio y la Fantasia) 2021, a fair aimed to the geek audience in Colombia that mixes Cosplay, gaming, superhero and movie fans from across Colombia, in Bogota, Colombia on October 18, 2021. (Photo by: Chepa Beltran/Long Visual Press/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Pomeroy noted that even if a greater number of jobs or occupations are created due to automation, individuals who have lost their jobs could still be left behind. A skills gap between displaced workers and workers in the new economy fuels economic and social inequality, research suggests.

Certain industries have fared better than others. In the October job report, the biggest gains were in the leisure and hospitality (+164K new jobs), personal and business services (+100K new jobs), and manufacturing (+60K new jobs) sectors, while the government sector lost 73,000 jobs.

Looking forward, employees in some of these industries may be challenged by emerging technologies capable of replacing workers. The HSBC report found that the mean probability of automation in the hospitality and retail management sector was over 30%.

Skills training will be crucial to economies looking to protect workers at risk for job displacement from automation, the report found. Current governments are investing way, way too little in education around the world, Pomeroy emphasized.

It's definitely gonna vary a lot [depending on] the country, he said. But I think the number one thing that governments all over the world and apps think about is much, much more investment in training.

Greater changes need to be made in education systems in order to cultivate creativity and human-specific skills instead of ones easily reproduced by machine learning, he added.

The problem is we have a lot of education systems across the world where we essentially train kids to be robots, Pomeroy said. You pass an exam by repeating something, you don't pass an exam by being creative and coming up with an idea and generating something new. You succeed academically by doing the exact thing we don't want people to do when they're at threat of automation.

Ihsaan Fanusie is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @IFanusie.

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These are the jobs at the highest risk from automation: HSBC - Yahoo Finance

The same questions apply for automation in road vehicles, Hart writes. Hence, despite the substantial potential life-saving improvements of removing drivers from cars, driverless cars probably will not achieve public acceptance for widespread use until car automation designers can answer those two questions.

Hart adds that developing autonomous vehicles (AVs) is more challenging compared to automation in commercial aviation, as airplanes operate in a less complex and more structured environment than streets and highways.

Aviation experience has demonstrated that automation concerns include inadequate consideration of human factors in designing automation, automation failure and automation in situations not anticipated by the designer, he writes. To avoid a skeptical public delaying acceptance of AV automation the AV industry would do well to learn from the aviation automation experience to avoid similar mistakes.

Hart notes that although the reliability of automation is improving, any system that is designed, built and maintained by humans will fail sooner or later. He adds that one of the major design challenges is ensuring that failures in automation will not endanger the lives of the passengers or those outside the vehicle, including other drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

Two common AV industry concepts for automation failure are to pull off to the side of the road or stop in the lane of travel. But these may not always be the safest options, Hart writes. A human driver may assess options in the moment to come up with a safer course of action. Consequences of accidents due to driverless vehicles elicit more negative reactions than those caused by human error only time will tell whether that public attitude will change.

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Driverless cars must hurdle key automation issues to be ready for widespread use: Safety expert - Law Times

DUBLIN, Nov. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "5G and Robotics Market in Industrial Automation: Teleoperation, Cloud Robotics, and Beyond 5G Technologies" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This research evaluates the outlook for 5G technology, infrastructure, devices, applications, and services. It assesses the technologies, capabilities, and anticipated communications and computing solutions beyond 5G. It also provides analysis for leading 5G and edge computing supported applications and services along with forecasting from 2021 to 2026, and in some cases, through 2030.

This research also evaluates the 6G market for infrastructure, devices, applications, and services. The report assesses the technologies, capabilities, and anticipated communications and computing solutions beyond 5G. It analyzes 5G evolution and the impact of anticipated 6G technologies on the ICT ecosystem including infrastructure, business planning, and innovation areas necessary to realize the beyond 5G market. It also provides forecasts for 6G technology including infrastructure, devices, apps and services from 2025 through 2030.

This research also assesses the cloud robotics market including technologies, companies, strategies, use cases, and solutions. The report provides global and regional forecasts for cloud robotics apps, services, and components from 2020 to 2025. Forecasts include the market outlook for cloud services support of cloud robotics including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Robotics as a Service (RaaS). Forecasting for cloud robotics by robot type and deployment model is also included covering Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Community Cloud.

This research also evaluates the emerging role of teleoperation and telerobotics in the era of Industry 4.0. The report analyzes the impact of teleoperation and telerobotics solutions in different industry verticals and technology sectors. The report also provides market forecasts for IIoT teleoperation and telerobotics systems, services, and solutions. The report also evaluates the role of digital twin technology in teleoperation and telerobotics.

Select Research Findings

5th generation mobile networks (5G) is a major phase of mobile communications. 5G is poised to deliver higher data transfer rates for mission critical communication. 5G will allow massive broadband capacities enabling high-speed communication for various industries and applications such as live TV, IoT, robotics and AI applications.

The convergence of 5G, wireless technologies beyond 5G, cloud robotics, and teleoperation solutions are poised to transform industrial automation for everything from traditional manufacturing environments to commercial agriculture, connected healthcare, and many other industry verticals. The combination of high bandwidth, extreme reliability, and ultra-low latency communications will enable highly interconnected systems and processes, leading to unprecedented workflow mechanization.

In terms of the beyond 5G market impact on business operations, 6G technologies are anticipated to accelerate the trend towards increasingly virtualized, programmable, and distributed network infrastructure. This includes 6G infrastructure within traditional carrier networks as well as further expansion of enterprise, industrial, and government-owned/controlled equipment and software. Neutral hosting and managed services will continue to grow in importance as will virtual-networking and the micro-operator service model.

Key Topics Covered

5G Technology, Infrastructure, Applications, and Devices by Segment, Region and Country 2021-2030

1. Executive Summary2. Introduction3. 5G Technology and Solutions4. 5G Applications and Services5. 5G Market Analysis and Forecasts 2020-20306. Conclusions and Recommendations7. Appendix: Forecasts for Leading 5G Apps and Services

Beyond 5G Technology, Infrastructure, and Devices 2025-2030

1. Executive Summary2. Introduction3. 5G Technology and Solutions4. Beyond 5G Technology and Solutions5. Beyond 5G Company and Organization Analysis6. Beyond 5G Regional and Country Analysis7. Beyond 5G Market Analysis and Forecasts 2025-20308. Conclusions and Recommendations

Cloud Robotics Market by Technology, Robot Type, Hardware, Software, Services, Infrastructure and Cloud Deployment Types, and Industry Verticals 2021-2026

1. Executive Summary2. Enabling Technologies3. Cloud Robotics Ecosystem Analysis4. Company Analysis5. Cloud Robotics Market Forecast 2021-20266. Drones Market Analysis 2021-20267. Conclusions and Recommendations8. Appendix: Digital Twinning

Teleoperation and Telerobotics: Technologies and Solutions for Enterprise and Industrial Automation 2021-2026

1. Executive Summary2. Introduction3. Technology and Application Analysis4. Company Analysis5. Market Analysis and Forecast 2021-20266. Conclusions and Recommendations

Companies Profiled

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/6r3qkz

Media Contact:

Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [emailprotected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

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Analysis of 5G and Robotics Markets in Industrial Automation | Global 5G Stand-alone Infrastructure Market Will Exceed $100B by 2026 - PRNewswire

Denver A new report from the Governors Highway Safety Association explores what training is needed to keep first responders and crash scene investigators safe when reporting to crash sites involving cars equipped with automated technologies.

Law Enforcement, First Responder and Crash Investigation Preparation for Automated Vehicle Technology, produced by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute for GHSA, is based off interviews with government administrators, first responders, law enforcement officials, automakers, crash reconstruction experts, insurance professionals and safety advocates.

As the presence of vehicles with a wide variety of automation and driver assistance technologies continues to increase, key questions facing first responders including law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and public safety responders are:

Recommended training topics include:

The rise of automated vehicle technology creates new opportunities to prevent crashes and accelerate efforts to reach our goal of zero roadway deaths, GHSA Executive Director Jonathan Adkins said in a press release, but this technology also poses new problems for public safety officials. GHSA remains focused on helping state highway safety offices and our law enforcement partners be ready for widespread deployment of vehicles with these technologies so everyone stays safe regardless of who is, or isnt, driving.

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First responders need training to safely deal with automated vehicles, GHSA says - Safety+Health magazine

With the aerospace engineering industry being a USD$34.8 billion industry, the race to create bigger and better means of aviation is well underway.

Also, this staggering amount of progress would not have been possible without the help of Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining.

The power to automate processes and perform surgical levels of precision are some of the countless benefits now relegated to these machines, and its rightly so. The margin for error is small and the stakes are high. Moreover, the fusion of human creativity and artificial intelligence (AI) functionality is slowly paving the way to the future.

To further discuss the finer points of CNC and its relation to aerospace automation, read below for some key areas of discussion.

Rapid prototyping is a key process in aerospace automation. What once took months of planning and preparation can now be done in a few weeks. Also, this is not factoring in the amount of funding used leading up to a presentation.

Failure to convince investors of theoretical designs and changes can be the premature death of a project. Diagrams and wordy explanations can sometimes fail to express the viewpoints and reasoning of an engineer. Additionally, concept presentations may no longer be enough to give investors the confidence to support these ideas.

CNC rapid prototyping along with Three-Dimensional (3D) printing can rapidly create physical manifestations of these projects. Being able to see and hold these components can make explaining them easier to grasp. Also, having an output during presentations can be reassuring to possible investors.

With access to this technology, enterprises can explore more ideas without budgetary constraints. Moreover, editing can be done on the fly and the need for specialized tools is no longer an issue.

Additionally, governments and private organizations like aerospace machining company Moseys productions can focus on breaking the current barriers of flight.

Material weight is an important factor when it comes to designing aircraft. They must be sturdy enough to withstand pressure while being heat-resistant to survive friction and engine heat.

Metals like tungsten, titanium, and aluminum are the most sought-after for these materials. They are relatively lighter than other metals but remain resilient.

Furthermore, a lighter aircraft is proven to be more fuel-efficient. Pressing issues like fossil fuel shortage and space flight feasibility are garnering greater attention on aerospace automation design.

Therefore, maximizing the use of these metals is said to create a better-performing aircraft while reducing emissions caused by larger fuel consumption.

CNC machining is used to process these materials thanks to their high compatibility. Automation ensures that material integrity is kept intact. Likewise, their controlled algorithms create consistent output and leave little to no waste.

Even the most experienced worker is bound to make errors now and then. While attention during production is crucial, its also repetitive and meticulous work. Fatigue and miscommunication can often occur and are cited as the leading cause of production errors.

Thus, CNC machinery is being integrated into aerospace automation as it aims to cover these lapses in human limitations. Machines can keep functioning so long as they are powered up. Not only that, but they are also typically designed to tackle one task for hours on end.

CNC machines are tireless and provide a centralized area for information to be processed. Therefore, the need to collate information from engineer to worker becomes a thing of the past. Should an error occur, changing a number or two on the machine can save the work floor from downtime and backtracking.

Companies can then reassign manpower to other departments. Therefore, leaving this process to CNC machines saves engineers from exhaustion and ensures consistent, high-quality output.

Breaking the mold on current aerospace automation limitations means a great deal of unconventional thinking. Current models used must be scrutinized repeatedly to weed out weaknesses or find better alternatives.

Also, the geometries and interlocking components that make up current aircraft are already perfectly fitting puzzle pieces. Changing a single aspect can sometimes mean unraveling other parts of the design.

As engineers strive for improvement, proposed designs can become increasingly complex. Development delays can occur as the production of these components is painstakingly carried out.

Fortunately, CNC machinery typically means the use of five-axis machining. This allows for increased nuance and the smoother creation of unusual designs.

Increased flexibility in a short amount of time can help engineers devote their efforts to breaking out of the mold. Airplanes and spacecraft soon could look significantly different from the designs of today.

When it comes to the future of aerospace travel, the skys the limit as human limitations are replaced with machine functionality. Conversely, technological constraints are answered with human creativity.

CNC machining already brings much to the table and could bring more. The use of automation where it matters could be enough to help people master aircraft flight and reach even further in the future.

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CNC And Aerospace Automation: 4 Things To Know - BBN Times