Reason writer Ronald Bailey outlines a strong case that fears about technological unemployment are overblown. For instance: He adds needed context to the recent finding by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Boston University economist Pascual Restrepo that each additional industrial robot in the United Statesresults in 5.6 American workers losing their jobs.

But even taking the high-end estimate, job loss due to robots was has been just 670,000 since 1990 while last year some 62.5 million Americans were hired in new jobs, while 60.1 million either quit or were laid off from old ones, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I would add that total nonfarm employment over that span has increased by nearly 40 million.

A passenger stands in front of a row of Cathay Pacific Airways self check-in machines in Hong Kong Airport March 10, 2010. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu.

And Bailey on the basic economics that shock stories often miss:

When businesses automate to boost productivity, they can cut their prices, thus increasing the demand for their products, which in turn requires more workers. Furthermore, the lower prices allow consumers to take the money they save and spend it on other goods or services, and this increased demand creates more jobs in those other industries. New products and services create new markets and new demands, and the result is more new jobs.

Pessimists also fail to appreciate our inability to imagine what future jobs look like, a failing that stems from our inability to imagine future technology and its uses. Bailey cites research from economist Michael Mandel that in the decade since the advent of the smartphone, the app economy now supports nearly two million jobs.

Let me end with this bit from Bailey that quotes economist David Autor:

Imagine a time-traveling economist from our day meeting with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller at the turn of the 20th century. She informs these titans that in 2017, only 14 percent of American workers will be employed in agriculture, mining, construction, and manufacturing, down from around 70 percent in 1900. Then the economist asks the trio, What do you think the other 56 percent of workers are going to do?

They wouldnt know the answer. And as we look ahead now to the end of the 21st century, we cant predict what jobs workers will be doing then either. But thats no reason to assume those jobs wont exist.

I cant tell you what people are going to do for work 100 years from now, Autor said last year, but the future doesnt hinge on my imagination.

(For more on the issues surrounding automation, a relatively recentpiece from the Richmond Fedis worth reading. Itlooks at things through the lens of how driverless vehicles might affect truck drivers.)

Read more from the original source:

A techno-optimist take on automation and jobs - American Enterprise Institute

Smaller Canadian regions that specialize in mining, manufacturing, and other natural resources jobs are most vulnerable to automation, according to a new report from Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (BII+E).

For the report, Automation Across the Nation: Understanding the potential impacts of technological trends across Canada, the Brookfield Institute applied findings from a recent report by McKinsey & Company on automation to employment figures from the 2011 Statistics Canada census, the most recent account of local labour statistics. Specifically, the Brookfield Institutes report aims to identify the Canadian cities and towns, as well as specific industries, that are most likely to be impacted by automation.

We expect that the impact of automation will vary considerably across Canadas towns and cities, said Sean Mullin, executive director of BII+E. By better understanding the geographic distribution of this trend, we believe the country will be much better prepared to weather the risks and reap the potential benefits of automation.

Industries most likely to be impacted by automation include accommodation and food services.

The report revealed that overall, 46 percent of work activities in Canada have the potential to be automated, across all industries, a figure that is equivalent to 7.7 million jobs. When it comes to specific industries, however, the report found that small regional economies that specialize in manufacturing or mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction are most susceptible to automation.

Some of these regions included Woodstock, Ontario, where 49.5 percent of work activities have the potential to be automated; Ingersoll, Ontario, where 50 percent of the work has the potential to be automated; and Quesnel, BC, where 49.64 percent of work activities have the potential to be automated.

On the contrary, the cities and towns that are less susceptible to automation are areas with a large hospital, post-secondary institution, or public sector presence such as Petawawa, Ontario, Ottawa-Gatineau, Ontario, and Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Diving further into specific industries, the report found that industries most likely to be impacted by automation also include accommodation and food services; transportation and warehousing; and agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting. According to the Institute, the proportion of work activities in industries with the potential to be automated is equal to 2.5 million jobs.

Large cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver lie in the middle of the pack. The report suggested that while about 46 percent of work activities in these regions have the potential of being automated, workers displaced by automation may have an easier time finding new jobs as these cities tend to specialize in professional, scientific, and technical services.

Overall, the report suggests that while automation will bring certain benefits, it will also bring significant risks for individual Canadians and communities, particularly for Canadas smaller cities and towns.

While the rate and extent of adoption of different technologies across industries is unknown, the benefits, as well as the job displacement risks resulting from automation, are likely to be more concentrated in certain industries, and in certain cities and towns, the report reads. This suggests a need to more deeply understand the areas and people that are most at risk, and to design policy and program responses, including in the areas of training, upskilling, education, and social safety nets, that take this uneven distribution of risk into account.

The Brookfield Institute plans to continue examining the differentiated impacts of automation on various regions and individuals across Canada in the coming months.

This is not the first time the Brookfield Institute has examined the relationship between automation and jobs. In March, the Brookfield Institute and RBC released a report that found that people aged 15 to 24 are one of the population segments most likely to experience changes in job roles and skills demand due to automation. They reportedly make up nearly 20 percent of employees that have a high risk of being impacted by automation.

Excerpt from:

Report: Smaller Canadian towns most likely to be impacted by automation - BetaKit

When people think of future technologies that will change our lives, robotics and the general trend towards more automation is usually at the top of the list. And while some of the more sci-fi aspects of this technology still appears to be in the future, robotics and automation is already an important industry, and one that could surge in status in the years ahead as well.

The space is probably a lot bigger than you think too. Sure, most are familiar with companies like iRobot (IRBT - Free Report) , but the industry goes beyond vacuuming and pool cleaning robots at this point. In fact, many big-name players are getting into the robotics world, and it looks to be a high growth area for quite some time.

To learn more about this growing trend, I spoke with Bill Studebaker, the CIO and President of Robo Global. This company was the first to create a benchmark index to track the global robotics and automation market, acting as a barometer for companies across the space, and making Robo Global a firm in the know about the world of robotics and automation.

Investing in Robotics

Bill and I discuss the key growth areas of the robotics and automation world, as well as some of the top reasons for the greater push towards robotics as of late, including the prospect of rising wages. We also talk about how this industry may have reached a critical mass in recent years, and what this means for investors too.

We also look at what the hot areas of the robotics world are, and I get Studebakers take on Bill Gates recent commentary that we may have to consider taxing robots in the near future. We then investigate what is ahead for this industry, and why an index-based approach might make sense in this high-growth and higher-risk corner of the market.

Index in Focus

The index is also the basis for the Robo Global Robotics & Automation Index ETF (ROBO - Free Report) , the most popular fundby assetsto track the space in the ETF world. We dive into the underlying benchmark in this podcast and I investigate how securities are chosen and weighted for the index.

This is especially important when you take a first glance at the index components for the benchmark, as some companies that make their way into the benchmark include large and well-known firms like Deere (DE - Free Report) and Northrop Grumman (NOC - Free Report) to name a few. We go over why these are in the index, as well as the wisdom behind including a number of semiconductor stocks such as Nvidia (NVDA - Free Report) , Qualcomm (QCOM - Free Report) , and Ambarella (AMBA - Free Report) too.

We also talk about the significant foreign exposure in this index, and why Japanese companies account for such a large portion of the benchmark as well. Finally, we talk about the market cap breakdown for companies in this space, and what could be ahead for this growing area.

If youve been interested in the world of robotics and how to invest in this space, definitely check out this podcast for a great guide to the industry!

Bottom Line

But what do you think about the world of robotics? Is this something youve considered for your portfolio? Make sure to write us in at podcast @ zacks.com or find me on Twitter@EricDutramto give us your thoughts on this, or anything else in the fund market.

But for more news and discussion regarding the world of investing, make sure to be on the lookout forthe next edition of the Dutram Report(each and every Thursday!) and check out themany other great Zacks podcasts as well!

Want key ETF info delivered straight to your inbox?

Zacks free Fund Newsletter will brief you on top news and analysis, as well as top-performing ETFs, each week.Get it free >>

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Guide to Investing in Robotics Stocks: What's the Future in Automation? - Zacks.com

Nearly half of Canadas work activities could be automated, and the communities most susceptible tend to have smaller populations with an outsize share of manufacturing or natural resources jobs, according to a newreport.

On the other hand, the Canadian areas best insulated from tech disruption include those where hospitals, postsecondary institutions and the public sector are major employers, the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurshipfinds.

The Toronto-based think tank applied McKinsey & Company data on automation to employment figures from the 2011 census, the most recent account of local labour statistics. (Labour figures from the 2016 census will be released inNovember.)

Census metropolitan areas with a higher share of non-routine work activities were less likely to be disrupted, the reportsays.

For example, one-third of Ottawa-Gatineau employees were working in health care, education services and professional scientific and technical services three industries that rely on human interaction and management. As a result, 44 per cent of the work activities in Ottawa-Gatineau had the potential to be automated, according to the study, making it the second-least susceptible area out of147.

In contrast, one-quarter of Ingersoll, Ont., employees were working in manufacturing and one-fifth in retail, restaurants and accommodation industries with highly repetitive tasks. The study found that 50 per cent of the work in Ingersoll had the potential to be automated, making it the area most at risk in thecountry.

Where does your city rank? Use the searchable table below to find out, or tap the column headings to order thefigures.

Source: BII + E

Read the original here:

Automation nation: Which Canadian communities are most at risk? - The Globe and Mail

This Axios headline is problematic: Summers: Automation is the middle class worst enemy.

The accompanying piece doesnt actually quote economist Larry Summers making that declaration. Rather it summarizes an interview in which Summers indeed points out the challenge automation poses for workers. Hes right. Of course thats been the case for the past 200 years and will likely be the case for the next 200. But in exchange for a degree of instability and disruption, technological progress has dramatically raised living standards for workers.

Automation is kind of like alcohol, which, as Homer Simpson putsit,is the cause of, and solution to, all of lifes problems. Its the job of policymakers to make sure workers are ready to climb to the next footholdor ledge as the waters of automation continue to rise. Its also their job to make sure policy is as supportive as possible of innovation. Indeed, we need more tech progress, not less. The U.S. economy currently suffers not from too much automation, but rather from too little investment in the sort of technology that would raise the countrys lackluster productivity, writesDerek Thompson in an excellent new piece at the Atlantic.

Technology will erase jobs but also create them. Unfortunately, as Kevin Kelly writes, we cant see those jobs from here because we cant yet see the machines and technologies that will make them.

The piece also includes this chart, which shows lower US labor force participation than other advanced economies:

But I doubt whether Summers blames automation vs. the lack of USpolicies that center-left economists see as supporting workers, such as paid leave, and high USincarceration rates. And here is economist David Autor on the net impact of automation on jobs this century:

A final observation is that while much contemporary economic pessimism attributes the labor market woes of the past decade to the adverse impacts of computerization, I remain skeptical of this inference. Clearly, computerization has shaped the structure of occupational change and the evolution of skill demands. But it is harder to see the channel through which computerization could have dramatically reduced labor demand after 1999. My suspicion is that the deceleration of the U.S. labor market after 2000, and further after 2007, is more closely associated with two other macroeconomic events. A first is the bursting of the dot-com bubble, followed by the collapse of the housing market and the ensuing financial crisis, both of which curtailed investment and innovative activity. A second is the employment dislocations in the U.S. labor market brought about by rapid globalization, particularly the sharp rise of import penetration from China following its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Read more:

Is Automation Really the Worst Enemy of the Middle Class? - Ricochet.com

BERKELEY Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics are powering a new wave of automation, with machines matching or outperforming humans in a fast-growing range of tasks, including some that require complex cognitive capabilities and advanced degrees. This process has outpaced the expectations of experts; not surprisingly, its possible adverse effects on both the quantity and quality of employment have raised serious concerns.

To listen to President Donald Trumps administration, one might think that trade remains the primary reason for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. Trumps treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, has declared that the possible technological displacement of workers is not even on [the administrations] radar screen.

Among economists, however, the consensus is that about 80% of the loss in US manufacturing jobs over the last three decades was a result of labor-saving and productivity-enhancing technological change, with trade coming a distant second. The question, then, is whether we are headed toward a jobless future, in which technology leaves many unemployed, or a good-jobless future, in which a growing number of workers can no longer earn a middle-class income, regardless of their education and skills.

The answer may be some of both. The most recent major study on the topic found that, from 1990 to 2007, the penetration of industrial robots defined as autonomous, automatically controlled, reprogrammable, and multipurpose machines undermined both employment and wages.

Based on the studys simulations, robots probably cost about 400,000 US jobs each year, many of them middle-income manufacturing jobs, especially in industries like automobiles, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. Of course, as a recent Economic Policy Institute report points out, these are not large numbers, relative to the overall size of the US labor market. But local job losses have had an impact: many of the most affected communities were in the Midwestern and southern states that voted for Trump, largely because of his protectionist, anti-trade promises.

As automation substitutes for labor in a growing number of occupations, the impact on the quantity and quality of jobs will intensify. And, as a recent McKinsey Global Institute study shows, there is plenty more room for such substitution. The study, which encompassed 46 countries and 80% of the global labor force, found that relatively few occupations less than 5% could be fully automated. But some 60% of all occupations could have at least 30% of their constitutive tasks or activities automated, based on current demonstrated technologies.

The activities most susceptible to automation in the near term are routine cognitive tasks like data collection and data processing, as well as routine manual and physical activities in structured, predictable environments. Such activities now account for 51% of US wages, and are most prevalent in sectors that employ large numbers of workers, including hotel and food services, manufacturing, and retail trade.

The McKinsey report also found a negative correlation between tasks wages and required skill levels on the one hand, and the potential for their automation on the other. On balance, automation reduces demand for low- and middle-skill labor in lower-paying routine tasks, while increasing demand for high-skill, high-earning labor performing abstract tasks that require technical and problem-solving skills. Simply put, technological change is skill-biased.

Over the last 30 years or so, skill-biased technological change has fueled the polarization of both employment and wages, with median workers facing real wage stagnation and non-college-educated workers suffering a significant decline in their real earnings. Such polarization fuels rising inequality in the distribution of labor income, which in turn drives growth in overall income inequality a dynamic that many economists, from David Autor to Thomas Piketty, have emphasized.

As Michael Spence and I argue in a recent paper, skill-biased and labor-displacing intelligent machines and automation drive income inequality in several other ways, including winner-take-all effects that bring massive benefits to superstars and the luckiest few, as well as rents from imperfect competition and first-mover advantages in networked systems. Returns to digital capital tend to exceed the returns to physical capital and reflect power-law distributions, with an outsize share of returns again accruing to relatively few actors.

Technological change, Spence and I point out, has also had another inequality-enhancing consequence: it has turbo-charged globalization by enabling companies to source, monitor, and coordinate production processes at far-flung locations quickly and cheaply, in order to take advantage of lower labor costs. Given this, it is difficult to distinguish between the effects of technology and the effects of globalization on employment, wages, and income inequality in developed countries.

Our analysis concludes that the two forces reinforce each other, and have helped to fuel the rise in capitals share of national income a key variable in Pikettys theory of wealth inequality. The April 2017 IMF World Economic Outlook reaches a similar conclusion, attributing about 50% of the 30-year decline in labors share of national income in the developed economies to the impact of technology. Globalization, the IMF estimates, contributed about half that much to the decline.

Mounting anxiety about the potential effects of increasingly intelligent tools on employment, wages, and income inequality has led to calls for policies to slow the pace of automation, such as a tax on robots. Such policies, however, would undermine innovation and productivity growth, the primary force behind rising living standards.

Rather than cage the golden goose of technological progress, policymakers should focus on measures that help those who are displaced, such as education and training programs, and income support and social safety nets, including wage insurance, lifetime retraining loans, and portable health and pension benefits. More progressive tax and transfer policies will also be needed, in order to ensure that the income and wealth gains from automation are more equitably shared.

Three years ago, I argued that whether the benefits of smart machines are distributed broadly will depend not on their design, but on the design of the policies surrounding them. Since then, I have not been alone. Unfortunately, Trumps team hasnt gotten the message.

Read more here:

Labor Markets in the Age of Automation by Laura Tyson - Project ... - Project Syndicate

Intelligence analysts are swimming in data pouring in from an array of vehicles and platforms a problem that isnt new, but for which government leaders still seek the right solutions.

To help stem the deluge and better position analysts and key mission-critical data, intelligence community officials are targeting automation as a high priority, with a futuristic vision for applications down the road as well.

A significant chunk of my analytic workforce today, I will send them to a dark room to look at TV monitors to do national security-essential work but boy, is it inefficient, Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, told reporters at the annual GEOINT Symposium in San Antonio, Texas. The number of people needed to maintain awareness of, if not exploitation of, one sensor is really daunting. I suspect were going to get more of those sensors. I cant double my human population in those dark rooms.

The near-term goal particularly centers on analysis of full-motion video that streams in from unmanned aerial systemsthe wolf really close to the door, as Cardillo put it.But he and other officials also are looking toward future uses for different types of automation, including artificial intelligence. And Cardillo, among others, are looking to partner up for help.

As the commercial industry and academic think tanks and advanced science and engineering schools move to artificial intelligence and machine learning, theyre all desperate to get a hold of some data with [which] to train their algorithms and teach their machines to learn, Cardillo said. He added that intelligence community leaders, including those at the NGA, are looking at how to safely expose data sets to accelerate development in automated tools.

But the NGA isnt just looking outside for solutions. Internally, the agency has launched a new Office of Ventures and Innovation aimed at guiding emerging technology from incubation through the entire life cycle.

To get to this automated, augmented future that were talking about, we need to coordinate across a lot of different parts of the agency, Anthony Vinci, NGA director of plans and programs, told C4ISRNET. Its not just a technology issue, its bringing technology and [research and development] into the operational units, into analysis or into the business services units, human development or finance for business analytics.

Vinci said the NGA is working closely with other government agencies, including the Defense Department, to further automation and AI and get to a new level of intelligence and military operations.

How can we use automation to take some of that pressure off of the analysts who are putting together those products? How do we buy back some of their time by automating some of these processes so they can focus on the higher-end analysis that they need to be focusing on? Thats a fundamental thing were trying to do using all the tools at the agencys disposal, Vinci said.

On the higher endthe exquisite analysishow can we bring in modeling and AI and some of those tools that are on the high end of technology to support analysis and do missions that werent even possible until now because we didnt have the tools to analyze that amount of data, or because we couldnt analyze some complex phenomenonologies? How can we bring them those tools and those models?

In a future operational landscape where autonomous vehicles dominate and interact with adversaries, its easy to see where intelligence missions cross over to operational military missions, Vinci noted.

These tools are not just intelligence tools; theyre operational as well. Were not just an intelligence agency, were a combat support agency, so we help across the spectrum, he said. Were a support function to someone who has to make a decision.

"We have to be able to act faster and get as far left of boom as possible.

See the rest here:

Intel officials pin high hopes on automation, artificial intelligence - C4ISR & Networks

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Automation Controllers With MQTT and Analytics Onboard Enable Lean IIoT Architectures - Automation World

New technologies are transforming our profession, and theyre also transforming the skills well need to stave off extinction.

In a paper titled The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation? University of Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne tried to gauge the odds that certain occupations will be completely automated within the next 20 years. Among their predictions:

In fact, only seven occupationscargo and freight agents, watch repairers, insurance underwriters, mathematical technicians, hand sewers, title examiners, and telemarketersfared worse in the study than tax preparers.

The researchers admit that these estimates are rough and likely to be wrong, writes National Public Radios Quoctrung Bui. But consider this a snapshot of what some smart people think the future might look like. If it says your job will likely be replaced by a machine, youve been warned.

Other studies offer similar predictions:

One way or anothercomplete automation or partialour jobs are about to change. This type of disruption is coming. In one notable example, in fact, it has already arrived.

Perhaps the biggest disruption bearing down on the CPA profession is coming from IBM Watson, a cognitive learning system that is capable of answering questions asked in natural language. From health care and education to law and finance to food preparation and satellite imagery, Watson is redefining how work gets done in stunning ways.

Heres what:

This stuff isnt science fiction anymore. Its here and its impacting our profession as we speak.

How will CPAs react? Will they scramble to keep up, as usual? Or will they work to position themselves to move beyond that disruption and create future-focused value for their clients?

If theyre smart, theyll do the latterand that means learning the new skills theyll need to remain relevant in an age of automation.

Numerous studies conducted over the past several years are nearly unanimous: Going forward, CPAs must become proficient at skills that have little to do with the professions traditional data-driven core. These skills include the following:

The most important skill of all, though, might also be the most ambiguous. Its anticipationthe ability to identify future trends early and position your organization and your clients to take advantage of those trends before they arrive. Renowned futurist and New York Times best-selling author Daniel Burrus calls it the key missing competency in business today.

He might be right. A 2014 report from The Sleeter Group found that the most often-cited reason why small and midsized businesses leave their CPA firms is because those firms provide reactive advice instead of proactive services. In essence, clients say they leave because their CPAs arent future-ready enough.

It seems the age of automation has also given birth to the age of anticipation. The good news is this: Were starting to see more and more resources being developed specifically to deliver these types of competencies for accounting and finance professionals.

One is Burruss own Anticipatory Organization. The Business Learning Institute worked with Burrus to create a version of his Anticipatory Organization learning platform specifically for accounting and finance professionals. Thats available now and is becoming extremely popular among CPAs throughout the country.

Another is IBMs Big Data University. Its an online curriculum designed to help accounting and finance professionals learn key skills in artificial intelligence, big data, and cognitive computingskills that will be huge differentiators going forward, and will help CPAs play a bigger role in guiding digital transformation within their organizations. The Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute have entered into an exclusive partnership with IBM to deliver these skills to accounting and finance professionals throughout the world.

As this age of automation progresses, accounting and finance professionals would be wise to ask themselves a few key questions:

What can I become quite good at thats really difficult for a computer to do one day soon? Seth Godin writes. How can I become so resilient, so human and such a linchpin that shifts in technology wont be able to catch up? It was always important, but now its urgent.

Put another way, to paraphrase Fast Company Editor Robert Safian, the most important skill going forward will be the ability to learn new skills.

The learning must begin now.

See original here:

Why Lifelong Learning is Our Competitive Advantage in the Automation Age - Accountingweb.com

By Vinnie Mirchandani on June 7, 2017

In this Strategy+Business article I summarized a century of automation from Silicon Collar like UPC scanners in groceries and ATM machines in banking and related impact of jobs. The summary: History shows that new technologies evolve faster than society adopts them.

There has been much hype and hysteria around the contemporary crop of automation technologies like AI and drones, but early results show they will get adopted just as gradually. Here are some recent findings:

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) McKinsey saysseveral robotics programs have been put on hold, or CIOs have flatly refused to install new botseven those vendors have worked on for monthstill solutions have been defined to scale the program effectively.

Autonomous cars Heather Knight an expert in human-robot interfaces has this to say about Teslas autopilot Id estimate that Autopilot classified ~30% of other cars, and 1% of bicyclists. Not being able to classify objects doesnt mean the Tesla doesnt see that something is there, but given the lives at stake, we recommend that people NEVER USE TESLA AUTOPILOT AROUND BICYCLISTS!. And car technology is evolving much faster than our road infrastructure, laws, ethics when it comes to driverless cars.

Industrial Robotics For six years since the tsunami wrecked the Fukushima nuclear reactor, robots have been sent in to try and help with the clean-up. Says TechCrunch Robots keep getting fried on their missions, literally from radiation damage, or stranded on-site wasting precious money and time. And this is Japan, the leading maker and consumer of robots, accounting for half of the worlds production and with the worlds largest concentration of robot engineers.

That will not stop vendors from saying its different this time or academics and analysts from screaming the sky is falling and that we will lose hundreds of millions of jobs. But most practitioners I talk to are well aware of the immaturity of many of these technologies and of their economics. These practitioners will gradually adopt these tools to change processes and work streams. The key word is gradual.

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More Slow-Motion Automation - Enterprise Irregulars (blog)

Chinas steady economic growthas opposed to hyper growthover the past five years has reset expectations and coincides with the countrys transition to more advanced manufacturing in multiple industries. Chinas manufacturers are investing in more equipment, such as robotics for their automotive industry, and on better asset management strategies for both legacy and new plants.

This optimization push centers on upgrading data acquisition platforms and crossing the bridge to true predictive maintenance approaches in many industries in China, including harsh plant floor environments.

Recently, China Steel upgraded the legacy monitoring system at its main facility in Kaohsiung, Taiwanand another steel production plant in Taichung Cityto provide better access to real-time equipment data, such as vibration levels for roller bearings and motors in their milling production area. This continuous process application includes molten metal being produced into blooms or slabs that eventually are rolled into finished products.

Due to the continuous nature of our production facility and the harsh environment+300 C temp, moisture and high vibrationit is very hard for us to maintain equipment once it gets deployed to the field, says Zhizhong Wang in China Steels R&D department.

The steel manufacturer used a legacy condition monitoring system, called the Facility Online Monitoring and Diagnosis System (FOMOS), to track mill equipment vibrations for multiple mill lines within facilities. However, the original monitoring system didnt provide real-time maintenance dataor efficiencybecause of a long lag time for this data to move from the plant floor to the database. Operators would typically collect raw data locally and upload condensed analysis results to a database, for example.

Also, this legacy system created volumes of vibration data as well as a large number of false alarms caused by rudimentary monitoring coming from the mill equipment. Its common to find that two pieces of the same equipment at similar locations and operating conditions exhibit different vibration levels after several years of operation, Wang says.

The original monitoring system relied on National Instruments PXI PC-based platform for the data acquisition. China Steel called on the automation supplier to upgrade this legacy system for all of its facilities in Chinaat least three steel production facilities. The upgraded monitoring platform, called FOMOS-AI, uses NIs LabView software to better define the vibration data coming from the milling equipment and leverages the companys PXI and CompactDAQ hardware for these plants.

As the monitoring systems name indicates, machine learning is a vital component. The system looks for useful condition indicators from the vibration signals and creates four different patternsin an operational contextfor the monitored equipment: constant speed and stable load; constant speed and variable load; variable speed and load; and reciprocating.

China Steel created these classifications and now they can apply a different algorithm for each asset type, says Brett Burger, principal marketing manager for National Instruments. A bump and shimmy on one type of motor might mean one thing, but the same thing on another motor might mean something completely different.

One of the features of the new system includes a baseline setup for equipment conditions that are determined by observation of diverse changes of the vibration signals through multiple indicators. The system also establishes a multidimensional baseline/alarm setting using statistical analysis based on operation regime and machine behavior, according to China Steel.

One example of this baseline setting in the field was a main motor cooling fan for a high-speed machining (HSM) finish mill. This cooling fan showed no signs of deterioration by overall trends, but a rise of acceleration in a high-frequency band in early July gave a preview to a functional failure of the motor bearings in early November.

Since the introduction of the monitoring system upgrade, unscheduled maintenance is down. One recent example of this is in steel forging, where abrasion wear on sliding liners can occur during the slab sliding process and can lead to broken main beams, seized synchronizer bearings and synchronous shaft fractures. Operators identified three sliding liners in failure mode via spectrum analysis in the FOMOS-AI and, after a field inspection, technicians replaced these liners during a scheduled maintenance period.

Before adopting the FOMOS-AI, the total number of unscheduled downtime hours was 250 hours per year. After three years with the new monitoring system, it's at 65 hours per year. In one year, the biggest steel maker in Taiwan saved about $230,000 in maintenance costs for all of its production facilities where FOMOS-AI was running.

The monitoring solution is more a gateway from the engineering side of the world, rather than the IT, Burger says. This system has sensors, processing and software that can run on it. And it has many networking capabilities, such as Modbus, serial and Ethernet.

Optimization for many legacy plants is the logical move and these step changes are proving to be profitable to both the company and its workforce.

Read the rest here:

China Steel Forges a New Condition Monitoring Approach - Automation World

The Digital Twin concept is steadily gaining groundin the product development worlda means of creating a virtual representation of physical assets, including modeling behaviorfor validation and test purposes. This process, which promises to reduce reliance on costly prototypes while accelerating time to market, is now starting to take root in the plant floor environment as a way to garner efficiencies for production and, in some cases, set the stage for predictive maintenance.

Unlike the product development space, where the definition is more universal, the concept of a digital twin varies among automation providers, depending on where their offerings fit in the automation stack. Some companies with deep roots in 3D CAD modeling like Dassault Systmes and Siemens see the digital twin as a way to define and optimize factory floor layout and production processes in a virtual world prior to putting physical assets in place and flipping the switch on production.

Other companies like Emerson Automation and Beckhoff consider the digital twin as a tool for validating and optimizing control systems and automation processes in the virtual worlda tactic that lends itself to a variety of use cases, including operator training and virtual commissioning. Other companies, like GE Digital, have a broad and ambitious game plan for the digital twin, leveraging it for everything from asset performance management to predictive and prescriptive maintenance, the latter combining a digital model with Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) connectivity, real-time operational and historical data, as well as machine learning and analytics.

In an entirely different interpretation, some players conflate the concept of a digital twin with virtualization, the now mainstream IT technology that abstracts operating systems, applications, networks and storage from the underlying hardware or software so the process is no longer dependent on a specific physical platform, allowing for greater flexibility and scale. For example, Wind River Titanium Control is an open standards-based, on-premise cloud infrastructure that creates a digital twin of a plants legacy equipment, allowing it to become a full participant in IIoT by creating a real-time data channel between the traditional physical controllers and automation systems and its virtual representation.

Despite the murkiness of the digital twin concept, one thing is clear: It doesnt constitute any one idea, any single set of simulations or analytics or even a specific product category. A digital twin is a whole set of analytics that look at different aspects of how an asset performs, says Matt Wells, general manager of automation software at GE Digital. What we found is not one analytics model has all the answers.

Twinning thesmart factory Currently, one of the more prominent use cases for the digital twin is validating plant floor layouts and simulating logistic processes as part of a digital manufacturing portfolio. At Dassault, the concept of a connected production digital twin is a virtual 3D replica of an actual physical structurerobots, conveyors, CNC machines and other plant floor assetsalong with a simulation of the actual production processes of a smart factory, according to Prashanth Mysore, portfolio technical director of digital manufacturing at Dassault.

Under pressure to improve quality and responsiveness, reduce costs and strive for continuous improvements, manufacturers have an opportunity with the production digital twin to react more responsively to various internal and external disruptive events driven by mass customization needs. Specifically, Mysore says, manufacturers embracing a digital twin strategy can increase productivity and manufacturing efficiency by reducing variability and synchronizing material. They can also improve quality and compliance by validating processes virtually to ensure they are right the first time in addition to running multiple what-if scenarios to analyze production options and ensure worker safety and productivity.

A 3D replica of the actual physical plant is not the end of the road for the digital twin, Mysore says. The digital twin is also used to connect production with materials management, quality processes, and labor and maintenance processes.

As part of its 3DExperience platform for global industrial operations, Dassault makes its version of the digital twin come to life through its Delmia digital manufacturing portfolio, which includes numerous simulation tools as well as manufacturing operations management (MOM) capabilities resulting from its Apriso acquisition and operations planning and optimization functionality from its buyout of Quintiq.

A digital twin or dynamic software representation of an entire plant or an offshore oil rig, for example, can serve a variety of use cases across an entire automation and process control project lifecycle, according to Ronnie Bains, business manager for dynamic simulation and process optimization at Emerson Automation Solutions. Emerson customers are leveraging digital twins to support the initial design of a facility, to build actual processes and control systems, and to understand whether what is being built can function at the proper throughput.

If youre doing something incorrectly and you dont have such simulation, you dont find out about the potential impact until much later in a projects process, Bains explains. With a digital twin, you can identify areas of concern and design flaws early on and fix them as opposed to when things are built out and its more expensive.

As part of its Multi-Purpose Dynamic Simulator systems, Emersons DeltaV Simulate capabilities allow companies to test control logic and operator graphics in a virtual commissioning scenario, minimizing potential errors and streamlining the startup process. The same technology can also be leveraged to assist in training operators in unique processes. The level to which the digital twin is applied varies from customer to customer, Bains says. For some, its just for training; for others, its the full lifecycle.

For its part, Beckhoff has assembled a set of tools for its TwinCAT automation suite that extends into the realm of digital twin, specifically for upfront virtual testing and commissioning. Via support for the vendor-neutral Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI), Beckhoff has created interfaces between its platform and popular model-based design and simulation tools like MathWorks Matlab and Simulink and Maplesofts MapleSim to allow for acquisition and visualization of real-time parameters while creating a closer connection between physical and digital models. The ability to import simulated code and run it directly on a physical system enables machine builders to test before setup, aiding in reliability and shortening time to market, according to Daymon Thompson, an automation specialist at Beckhoff.

At Rockwell Automation, the whole premise of the digital twin is to remove the need for the physical asset, whether its to test the actual hardware or control systems, notes Andy Stump, business manager for the companys software portfolio. Rockwells Studio 5000 Logix Emulate software enables users to validate, test and optimize application code independent of physical hardware while also allowing connectivity to third-party simulation and operator training systems to help teams simulate processes and train operators in a virtual environment.

In this context, a digital twin can be employed to provide a safer, more contextualized training environment that focuses on situational experience. It helps with emergency situations, starting up and shutting downthings you dont encounter ever day, Stump explains.

A digital twin of a control system created in the Logix Emulate tool could also be tapped for throughput analysis, Stump adds, ensuring, for example, that a packaging machine could handle a new form factor without having to actually bring down the machine to test the new design. Any time you take a machine out of production, its expensive, he says. If you can estimate that a machine is going to be down 60 percent of the time running what-if scenarios in a digital twin, theres a lot of money to be saved.

Moving forward, Rockwell will leverage new technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to enhance its vision for a digital twin. At the Hannover Fair in April, the company demonstrated a next-generation, mixed-reality virtual design experience using its Studio 5000 development environment with the Microsoft HoloLens VR headset.

For Siemens, the concept of a digital twin straddles both product design and production. In a production capacity, the digital twin exists as a common database of everything in a physical plantinstrument data, logic diagrams, piping, among other sourcesalong with simulation capabilities that can support use cases like virtual commissioning and operator training. Comos, Siemens platform for mapping out a plant lifecycle on a single data platform, and Simit, simulation software used for system validation and operator training, now have tighter integration to support more efficient plant engineering and shorter commissioning phases, says Doug Ortiz, process automation simulation expert for Siemens. In addition, Comos Walkinside 3D Virtual Reality Viewer, now with connectivity to the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality 3D glasses, enables a more immersive experience, allowing plant personnel to engage in realistic training and virtual commissioning exercises, he says.

Customers want to get plants from the design stage to up and running in the shortest period of time and these tools are paramount for that, Ortiz says. The digital twin is great to use for any plant for the lifecycle of that unique plant.

Improvedmaintenanceopportunities While most companies in the automation space are settling in with the digital twin for roles in operator training, virtual commissioning and optimization, there is still not a lot of activity leveraging the concept for predictive and preventive maintenance opportunities. The exception might be GE Digital, which is clearly pushing this use case as its long-term vision.

GE Digital sees four stages of analytics that will be impacted by digital twin and IoT:

GE Digital showed off a digital twin representation of a steam turbine to showcase what is possible in the areas of predictive and prescriptive maintenance at its Minds + Machines conference last November.

A digital twin is a living model that drives a business outcome, and this model gets real-time operational and environmental data and constantly updates itself, said Colin J. Parris, vice president of software research at GE Globals research center, during the presentation. It can predict failuresreduce maintenance costs and unplanned outages, andoptimize and provide mitigation of events when we have these types of failures.

Though the digital twin is certainly making headway in production, its still in its early days. Digital twin is definitely hot right now, but it really depends on what the customer is trying to achieve and what they are trying to model, says Bryan Siafakas, marketing manager in Rockwell Automations controller and visualization business, adding that its just a matter of time. There is a huge upside in terms of productivity savings and shortened development cycles.

Continued here:

Digital Twin Spawns Automation Efficiencies - Automation World

On Monday, at HPE Discover 2017 in Las Vegas, HPE introduced updates to its OneView software that could make it a more useful tool for DevOps practitioners. Announcements included improved infrastructure automation, container support, and new partner integrations.

For those unfamiliar, OneView is a "software-defined intelligence that automates complex tasks," which could help simplify lifecycle operations, speed app delivery, and improve DevOps delivery on certain HPE products, according to an HPE press release.

Improved automation means that OneView will get a boost in its ability to manage infrastructure and firmware, the release said, which could help to lower lifecycle management costs. OneView will support HPE Synergy, ProLiant BL, DL and ML, HPE Apollo, and HPE Superdome X servers, the release said.

SEE: HPE partners with Docker on hybrid infrastructure play

For container support, Docker will now be available bundled with HPE Synergy and HPE Pointnext, with automatic storage provisioning and additional tools that will make it possible to run Docker Enterprise Edition, the release said.

HPE Synergy, the firm's modular composable infrastructure system, is getting a Mesosphere integration as well, allowing for automated Mesosphere Enterprise DC/OS deployments on HPE infrastructure, the release said. A new strategic alliance between HPE and Mesosphere was also announced, to provide customers with a more effective way of leveraging containers and the cloud.

Troubleshooting on HPE OneView is also being made easier with a new ServiceNow integration, while a Densify.com integration will use predictive analytics to help IT more intelligently place and manage workloads. According to the release, Red Hat OpenShift is also integrating with HPE OneView to automate container provisioning and boost app delivery as well.

HPE also noted that the firm was working on a Redfish toolkit for OneView, that would make it easier for customers to use Redfish without as much scripting. Additional tools will make it simpler to deploy and manage HPE hardware on a Cisco ACI network.

Finally, four months after acquiring SimpliVity, HPE is offering an HPE SimpliVity hyperconferged solution on the HPE Proliant DL380, guaranteeing "90% data efficiency and an under a minute back up restore," the release said.

Image: iStockphoto/Natali_Mis

See more here:

HPE updates OneView with new automation features and DevOps integrations - TechRepublic

Investors have planted $7.3 million in Freight Farms to help the Boston-based startup bring its micro-farms to more places around the globeand potentially even beyond.

The investors in the Series B round include return backer Spark Capital, also based in Boston. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Monday. Freight Farms total venture capital haul now exceeds $12 million, according to SEC filings.

The company sells shipping containers filled with hydroponic farming systems that can grow a variety of lettuces, herbs, and other greens. The system is designed to operate with minimal hands-on work by humans. It employs LED lights and automated watering and fertilizing technology. Operators can monitor the farm through a live camera feed, and they can use an app to control the climate within the shipping container and shop for growing supplies. The company has said the system uses less water than traditional farming methods, and because its housed inside a shipping container, it doesnt require pesticides or herbicides.

Freight Farms has deployed more than 100 of these farming systems across the U.S. and in several countries. Customers include urban farmers, traditional farms, produce distributors, and universities.

The startup was formed in 2010 by Brad McNamara and Jon Friedman, who previously worked on rooftop hydroponic gardens.

Freight Farms is trying to take advantage of the growing interest in local food sourcing, as its shipping containers can be set up close to where food gets sold or consumed. It also aims to enable year-round food production in challenging localesthink the snowy mountains of Colorado, or even space. Freight Farms and Clemson University are working on a NASA-funded project exploring ways to grow food in harsh climates and, potentially, deep space.

Freight Farms also fits with trends in agriculture around automation and using digital tools. Thats a key reason why Spark made another investment.

Modular, Internet-connected, and highly automated commercial farms will play an important role in bringing local and affordable produce to communities all over the world, Sparks Todd Dagres and John Melas-Kyriazi wrote in a blog post about the new investment. Value will accrue to those who own the technology layer of this farming stack (hardware + software) as data and automation become increasingly important drivers of low-cost production.

Agricultural technology companies are taking various approaches to indoor farming. Like Freight Farms, Atlanta-based PodPonics sells tech-enabled mini-farms inside shipping containers. Businesses such as New York-based BrightFarms and Harrisonburg, VA-based Shenandoah Growers produce food inside greenhouses. And startups like Grove and SproutsIO, two Boston-area firms, sell micro-farming systems to consumers for growing food inside their homes.

Jeff Engel is a senior editor at Xconomy. Email: jengel@xconomy.com

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Freight Farms Lands $7.3M as Agriculture Meets Data & Automation - Xconomy

By Staff writer 06 Jun 2017Read later

The organizer of Labelexpo Europe has confirmed details of the Automation Arena, a ground-breaking new feature debuting in 2017 at the label and package printing industrys preeminent trade fair.

Industry 4.0 is the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. Demonstrating this shift towards combining industry with the Internet of Things, the Automation Arena is a practical live workshop featuring two automated press lines for digital and conventional label production. It will show visitors how information management can integrate workflow and automate production, working towards better performance, reliability and profitability for todays printer.

Located in Hall 11, the Automation Arena is being held in collaboration with Cerm, Esko, Xeikon, MPS, Kocher + Beck, AVT, Rotocontrol, Matho and Wasberger. Three half-hour long real-time presentations will run daily at 11:00, 13:00 and 15:00 over the shows first three days and once at 11:00 on the final day. These sessions will be filmed live and relayed via large screens to show visitors every single, detailed aspect of the job.

The print jobs run during the Automation Arena will be produced using digital and conventional printing technology. Job creation, artwork uploading and MIS order processing steps will take place in Cerms system before the pre-flighting, quality checks, proofing and customer approval are progressed using Eskos software platform and automation engine. This will be followed by Cerm scheduling, ink and substrate checking, tool ordering and the sending of JDF files, ready for printing. Both presses will utilize AT740 film from Avery Dennison, with inks supplied by Flint Group.

The conventional print runs will be produced on an MPS EF 430, 8-color press with no gear cylinder connection, intelligent pressure setting and zero waste roll change which in turn will be fitted with a Kocher + Beck UR Precision 440 U non-stop splicer unwind and AVTs Helios inspection technology. A Rotocontrol RSC 340 WFL slitter and turret rewinding unit will also feature with Wasbergers fully automatic Core Cutter S and Mathos EM180 Cuttopipe waste removal system.

For digital prints, job files differing from the conventional print runs will be sent to a Xeikon X-800 digital front end for batching, step and repeat and preparation of job identification, die-cut, inspection and turret rewinder barcodes for printing on a Xeikon 3300 press with an in-line laser die-cutting unit. When the Xeikon press starts its run, the audience will be able to see the different identification barcodes in operation, AVT defect detection, laser die-cutting set-up and rewinder automation.

The final stages in the job automation process will return to the Cerm operator and the audience will be taken through steps including warehousing, job picking, shipping carrier allocation, customer notification and invoicing.

Jade Grace, Labelexpo Europe project director, commented: This type of tradeshow feature has never been done anywhere before. The Automation Arena will clearly demonstrate to Labelexpo visitors that automation is not only the promise of tomorrow, but that it's available today.

To remain profitable, printers need to plan ahead by integrating their pre-press and production workflows with their management operations and connecting their entire supply chain. Printers automating their business will boost their competitiveness and become more agile with lower costs, increased productivity and better reliability, leading to higher profit margins. The Automation Arena will give attendees a good insight into the benefits of automation and a taste of how label and packaging production may evolve over the next five to ten years.

Labelexpo Europe 2017 will also feature a dedicated master class on MIS and workflow automation on September 26. Organized by the Label Academy, the five-hour master class will be presented by Mike Fairley and focus on how electronically managing an efficient and profitable 21st Century operation is able to offer an integrated management information system.

Labelexpo Europe 2017 takes place September 25-28, with online visitor registration available now and an early bird discount rate available until September 15.

Read Mike Fairleys Automate to survive opinion article here

Read an article on automation at the supplier level here

View original post here:

Labelexpo Europe 2017 presents Industry 4.0 with Automation Arena - Labels and Labeling

Actuatorswhether powered by electricity, air or some type of fluidare an integral part of creating movement in any production process. Long viewed as commodities, with strict limits on form factors and functions, their technical capabilities are beginning to change as suppliers respond to customer demands for more information to improve device reliability and process productivity.

The idea that information from actuators, including motors and drives, can be used to improve the operation of those devices is not a new one. After all, control systems have been monitoring and managing production systems for years. But by using actuators with the ability to connect to the Internet, its easier to see how an individual device is operating from outside the production system, separate from the mass of process information. Its one of many next steps on the road to what is being described as smart manufacturing.

Although much of the focus now is on using Internet-ready actuators for predictive maintenance to reduce production downtime, most experts say even greater benefits will accrue in the future from being able to optimize the functioning of a production process and its individual components.

In the past, it was difficult to gauge how an individual device was functioning or why it was failing because data was limited or maybe not available at all, explains Rich Mintz, marketing manager for low-voltage motors and drives at Siemens. Now, if an actuator is compatible with Ethernet, it may be able have its own IP address, so data could be viewed on a web page. But were starting to see diagnostic data on another layer, a platform for viewing the data thats being generated by the device and that you can use for analysis, whether its detecting what caused a fault or predicting faults before they can occur.

This diagnostic data can exist outside the proprietary process datasometimes in the cloudso that third parties can also help with data analytics while maintaining security. Its condition monitoring with a purpose, Mintz says. The point is to turn data into information: Im overheating because this is happening and heres what you need to do to fix it.

The goal of making actuators with Internet of Things (IoT) connections is to find ways to help customers with their process problems, notes Ranjani Balasubramaniam, director of large drives strategies and programs at Siemens. Since additional capabilities are now available, we need to make sure the benefits are well understood by the customer.

She cites industries that deploy large motors as a critical part in their processes, such as mining, oil and gas production, paper and power generation, as most likely to benefit from IoT-ready actuators. This is not only because these motors consume a great deal of electricity, but because downtime can be extremely expensive, both in terms of lost production and the difficulty in restoring operations, especially in remote locations.

But even a small motor can play a critical role in a process. If how a device is functioning affects product quality, process continuity, redundancy or safety, then its worthwhile to invest in getting more information about how its operating, Balasubramaniam says.

Like many other automation suppliers, Siemens has begun to offer device-monitoring services for its customers, in its case monitoring mobile mining equipment using lifetime analytics. Were able to help customers visualize data from their machines, so theyre better able to understand whats happening and why, Balasubramaniam adds.

Ethernet simplifiesconnectivity Though Internet-ready devices dont usually look much different than the traditional versions, they do require a physical port to allow a device to make an Ethernet connection. These devices also often have an embedded Ethernet-based protocol that makes it easier to connect them to a network or the cloud. Some suppliers are also working to develop wireless interfaces.

You can make this kind of connection from a traditional fieldbus network, but its much more difficult technically. Another Ethernet benefit is that its capable of transmitting larger amounts of data than traditional fieldbus.

If you know how healthy the devices in your production process are, you can take proactive steps to minimize downtime, says Nuzha Yakoob, senior product manager for electric automation at Festo. Thats the whole purpose for having Internet-ready actuators: so that you can monitor vibrations, temperatures, rotor status or any number of other conditions that could affect equipment operations.

Ethernet connectionsas opposed to closed systems like CANopen or DeviceNetmake it easier to exchange data and monitor production equipment remotely over a wide area network or through the cloud, Yakoob explains. Companies in the petrochemical industry, for example, are finding Ethernet extremely useful for monitoring process and production systems, which are often spread over large geographical areas, she says. The ability to share information between facilities or with the supply chain is even more important for companies that operate globally. Factors like these are driving the adoption of Internet- and Ethernet-ready devices.

One of the advantages of IoT-ready controllers is two-way data exchange. This allows you to share data to a SCADA system or the cloud, but it also makes it easy to push data down to electric or pneumatic devices for parameterization or configuration, Yakoob says. At Festo, we use the open standards protocol IO-Link, which can push data into IO-Link master devices that are employed on various machines to regulate pressure, monitor temperatures and sense positions or other values. We also use the OPC UA open standard for data exchange. These standards simplify machine communications.

Sensors as a bridge While electromechanical and electronic devices have been relatively easy to modify to accommodate Ethernet and Internet communications, pneumatic actuators must find ways to overcome the restrictions placed on them by traditional standards.

To put electronics into pneumatic actuators you would have to change their size in terms of length and width, so they would no longer fit the NFPA standards, explains Mark Densley, head of product management for controls at Aventics.

Makers of pneumatic systems like Aventics are getting around this barrier by using sensors as a bridge to access device data such as speed, velocity or whether cushioning is deteriorating. Sensors allow us to manipulate data and turn it into something we can interpret and transmit over Ethernet using the OPC UA standard, which provides a universal language for communicating between different machines, he says.

Maintenance is another challenge that must be overcome in the transition to devices that use electronics, according to Densley. Workers who are familiar with how pneumatic devices work may not know as much about electronics or control systems, he says. Its up to us as a manufacturer to make it easy.

Smart pneumatic monitors are able to communicate using many different standards and are completely independent, so they dont interfere with process control running on fieldbus. Software modules are optimized for typical pneumatic applications, such as pressured air consumption, leakage detection by consumption monitoring and correlation with process information, wear monitoring for actuators and shock absorbers, and counting switching cycles.

Intelligent pneumatics combine hardware, electronics, software and data, Densley explains. While the increasing volume of data transfer will stress controls and IT networks, local data analysis and creation of information can provide a solution. Decentralizing valve electronics, for example, will support modularization and networking.

Encouraging propermaintenance Transitioning to IoT could help overcome a perennial problem at many manufacturing sites: the attitude that equipment should be run to failure rather than following proper maintenance practices. Equipment often isnt maintained or is subjected to heavier duty use than it was designed for, so that it fails when people dont expect it, Densley says. When Ethernet and the Internet make condition monitoring and predictive maintenance easier, companies will begin to see the advantages because theyll experience less downtime and greater productivity from their equipment investment.

Manufacturers usually focus on three priorities when they adopt an IoT architecture: condition monitoring, lifecycle analysis and energy efficiency. For example, control valves usually have a lifecycle of 140 million cycles. Using web access to monitor cycle counts allows you to predict when the valve will fail, Densley explains. The capability to generate this data is built into the valve and the I/O module can transmit the information to an OPC server or a gateway.

Plant personnel are less interested in knowing exactly whats going on with the actuator than in how the equipment and the production process are performing, he adds. With two-position sensing, for example, you can monitor when a cylinder enters the cushioning area and when it leaves. This helps you determine if shock absorbers are wearing, which would tell the operator to use more air in the process.

Its not just manufacturers that want to know how well machines are operating. OEMs have a vested interest as well, Densley says. OEMs make money selling spare parts, but not until the warranty expires. Theyre looking at remote monitoring as a way to prevent downtime while a machine is under warranty, because they dont want to have to pay the cost of fixing it.

Original post:

Internet-Ready Actuators and a World in Motion - Automation World

Home automation is not a Jetsons-era future. Its here now, and the possibilities are endless. From an ever-expanding list of compatible home tech products to DIY hacks, the industry is growing by leaps and bounds.

Heres home automation 101 to cover your biggest questions and the must-have devices for smart home beginners.

What Is Home Automation?

Also called smart home technology, home automation is the electronic control of household activities. More advanced automation connects home features to a network in order to control, program and monitor their use. This device network is referred to as the Internet of Things.

Automated homes utilize a centralized system for simple and more complex home features and appliances, like controlling lights, locks, heating and cooling systems, indoor and outdoor cameras, security systems, blinds, sound systems and even coffee pots.

Most products use software that remotely controls home features through a device connected to the internet; for example, a homeowner can lock their front door from the office using their smartphone. Home automation also refers to the use of sensors, like an HVAC system automatically turning on and off based on home occupancy.

What Is Home Automation Good For?

Its not an expensive luxury reserved for the wealthy or even a home feature only accessible to techies. Technology today is almost limitless, featuring devices for every room of your house. Plus, homeowners arent just buying these devices for the tech aspects; smart technology has some obvious benefits.

What Features Do I Need?

Start by analyzing your needs. Whats your end goal? Maybe you crave more personalization or convenience or security. Home features that have the power to be automated today are fairly endless, so homeowners have lots of options.

Dont forget to also determine your budget going forward, the method that works for you to incorporate smart technology into your home and the time you want to invest. You dont want to get the wrong technology for your home or your bank account.

What Devices Should I Start With?

One of the easiest ways to begin automating your home is to buy a smart plug. These plugs allow you to control any electrical home device, from a lamp to an electronic pet feeder. From there, you can continue adding products based on what you need and want.

Though transforming an entire home into a smart home can feel daunting, one solution is beginning with a single room. If you spend the most time in your kitchen, automate kitchen appliances first with a smart crock pot or smart toaster oven. If the living room is your favorite place to relax, you can use a Roku device to control your TV with your phone and Philips Hue lights to adjust the mood lighting depending on the program youre watching. What Are the Must-Have Home Automation Products?

Top sellers on Amazon include smart light switches, smart LED lightbulbs and the Amazon Echo speaker (a voice-activated smart hub). Based on versatility and ease of use, The Wirecutter ranks voice-controlled speaker Google Home, Chamberlain MyQ Garage door controller, SkyBell doorbell camera and the NETGEAR Arlo Pro security camera as a few of their must-have products.

Can a Renter Automate Their Home?

Even if youre temporarily leasing an apartment or home, you can still automate your rental unit and take the automated devices with you to your next living space. Many smart devices dont need full installation into a homes electrical wiring, and most features that need to be hardwired, like light switches, can still be uninstalled.

Home automation is so simple and accessible that its easy to turn a traditional home into a home tech wonder. Were at the cusp of a growing and increasingly more affordable field of automated products. To start from square one, begin small with a capability or two, and then build in more to grow your automation network.

Have you considered implementing home automation products? What do you look forward to enjoying most about the technology? Let us know in the comments below!

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6 Questions to Ask When Considering Home Automation: A Beginner's Guide - Zing! Blog by Quicken Loans (blog)

The highest performing organizations have automated 72 percent of all configuration management processes. And those same high performers spend much less time (28 percent) in manual configuration processes that stall innovation and deployments.

In comparison, low performers are spending almost half of their time (46 percent) on manual configuration. These are among the findings of the latest State of DevOps Report by Puppet, which surveyed 3,200 respondents from organizations of all sizes and across multiple industries.

For the first time, the report also considered leadership types and how they affect performance. The results show that high-performing teams have leaders with the strongest behaviors across five characteristics. These include vision, inspirational communication, intellectual stimulation, supportive leadership and personal recognition. Leaders that exhibit a lower percentage of these characteristics tend to have lower performing teams.

Lean product management practices come under the spotlight too, and the report concludes that they help teams ship features that customers want, more frequently. This faster delivery cycle lets teams experiment, creating a feedback loop with customers, ultimately benefiting the entire organization.

"Every company relies on software to make its business more powerful, forcing IT organizations to evolve and ship software on demand," says Nigel Kersten, chief technical strategist at Puppet. "The results of the 2017 State of DevOps Report show that high-performing IT teams are deploying more frequently and recovering faster than ever before, yet the automation gap between high and low performing teams continues to grow. The report will help organizations understand how to identify their own inhibitors and embrace change on their DevOps journey."

You can find out more in the full report which is available to download from the Puppet website.

Photo Credit: anathomy/Shutterstock

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DevOps automation boosts performance - BetaNews

Last year, Tesla made the acquisition of the German engineering group Grohmann Engineering in order to createTesla Advanced Automation Germany. The transaction closed in January, but we now learn that things havent been going smoothly since then.

Tesla co-founder and Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel visited the headquarters earlier this month to announce that the companys founder left just a few weeks after the deal was made official.

Furthermore, the company announced this week that it will drop all other clients, among them are several major automakers, in order to focus on Teslas needs for the Model 3, which is apparently worrying the workforce.

Grohmann Engineering is an engineering firm headquartered in Prm, Germany, where they serve important manufacturing clients, especially major German automakers like BMW and Daimler.

During a press call following the announcement of theacquisition, Grohmann described the companys client base:

We have practically all the big automotive manufacturers as our clients.We also have the semiconductor producers as clients, as well as significantly large companies in the field of bio-automation and life science.

At the time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk hinted that he would be open to continuing working with Grohmanns clients, but he only committedto completing the current contracts:

There are a number of existing automotive clients for Grohmannand we will, of course, honor those contracts and try to be as useful as we can to the industry as a whole in transitioning to clean energy mobility. [] If you apply Teslas philosophy to help the whole automotive industry in moving to e-mobility as you may know, Tesla made all of its patents freely available just to be helpful to the rest of the industry and as a gesture of goodwill. And thats something we expect to continue.

Now we learn via local news outlet Sudwestrundfunk(German) that Tesla is in the process of ending all relationships between Tesla Advanced Automation Germany and itsoutside clients. Tesla confirmed the news and the head of the companys workers council even said that they are canceling existing orders.

The reason given for the sudden change is to focus on the production of the Model 3 somethingGrohmann Engineering has been involved in even before its acquisitionby Tesla.

Before this weeks announcement, CTO JB Straubel was present at an employee assembly with about half of the 680 employees, mostly engineers and techniciansspecialized in manufacturing, on April 1st, according to local news outlet Volksfreund (German):

During this meeting, the company announcedthat its 74-year-old founder Klaus Grohmann decided to retire.

When he announced the deal to acquire the company last year, Musk said of Grohmann, the founder of the engineering firm, that he was one of the world leaders in highly automated methods of manufacturing.

The company is still full of skilled engineers, but some of them are apparently worried about dropping other clients to focus only on Tesla. The head of the workers council said that they are excited about the prospect of working for an innovative company like Tesla, but they also liked the security of having a broad range of clients. Though the company is currently growing and Tesla currently lists a dozen engineering jobs in Prm. The concerns appear to be more long-term.

In the past few weeks, over 100 workers decided to unionize bringing the total to about half of the ~680 employeesatGrohmann, nowTesla Advanced Automation Germany.

They are seeking a labor agreement for a compensation increase of 150 euros per month. The move comes amid Tesla being in the middle of another union push at its Fremont factory in California.

This is all happening while Tesla is trying to bring the Model 3, its $35,000 all-electric sedan, to production in July. The vehicle will be assembled at the Fremont factory, while the powertrain will be manufactured at the Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, and the engineering group is working on the production processes or the machines building the machines as Musk likes to say.

Read more:

Tesla's new 'Advanced Automation' group will drop all other clients to focus on Model 3 production - Electrek

Vehicular automation involves the use of mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent system to assist a vehicle's operator. These features and the vehicles employing them may be labeled as intelligent or smart. A vehicle using automation for difficult tasks, especially navigation, may be referred to as semi-autonomous. A vehicle relying solely on automation is consequently referred to as robotic or autonomous. After the invention of the integrated circuit, the sophistication of automation technology increased. Manufacturers and researchers subsequently added a variety of automated functions to automobiles and other vehicles.

Ground vehicles employing automation and teleoperation include shipyard gantries, mining trucks, bomb-disposal robots, robotic insects, and driverless tractors.

There are a lot of autonomous and semi-autonomous ground vehicles being made for the purpose of transporting passengers. One such example is the free-ranging on grid (FROG) technology which consists of autonomous vehicles, a magnetic track and a supervisory system. The FROG system is deployed for industrial purposes in factory sites and has been in used since 1999 on the ParkShuttle,[2] a PRT-style public transport system in the city of Capelle aan den IJssel to connect the Rivium business park with the neighboring city of Rotterdam (where the route terminates at the Kralingse Zoom metro station). The system experienced a crash in 2005[3] that proved to be caused by a human error.[4]

Applications for automation in ground vehicles include the following:

Research is ongoing and prototypes of autonomous ground vehicles exist.

Extensive automation for cars focuses on either introducing robotic cars or modifying modern car designs to be semi-autonomous. Semi-autonomous designs could be implemented sooner as they rely less on technology that is still at the forefront of research. An example is the Dual mode monorail. Groups such as RUF (Denmark), BiWay (UK), ATN (New Zealand) and TriTrack (USA) are working on projects consisting of private cars that dock onto monorail tracks and are driven autonomously. As a method of automating cars without extensively modifying the cars as much as a robotic car, Automated highway systems (AHS) aims to construct lanes on highways that would be equipped with, for example, magnets to guide the vehicles. Automation vehicles have auto-brakes named as Auto Vehicles Braking System (AVBS). Highway computers would manage the traffic and direct the cars to avoid crashes.

The European Commission has established a smart car development program called the Intelligent Car Flagship Initiative.[5] The goals of that program include:

There are plenty of further uses for automation in relation to cars. These include:

The concept for autonomous vehicles has also been applied for commercial uses, like for autonomous or nearly autonomous trucks. As recorded in June 1995 in Popular Science Magazine, self-driving trucks were being developed for combat convoys, whereby only the lead truck would be driven by a human and the following trucks would rely on satellite, an inertial guidance system and ground-speed sensors.[8]Caterpillar Inc. made early developments in 2013 with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University to improve efficiency and reduce cost at various mining and construction sites.[9] Companies such as Suncor Energy, a Canadian energy company, and Rio Tinto Group were among the first to replace human-operated trucks with driverless commercial trucks run by computers.[10] In April 2016, trucks from major manufacturers including Volvo and the Daimler Company completed a week of autonomous driving across Europe, organized by the Dutch, in an effort to get self-driving trucks on the road. With developments in self-driving trucks progressing, U.S. self-driving truck sales is forecasted to reach 60,000 by 2035 according to a report released by IHS Inc. Automotive in June 2016.[11]

An automated guided vehicle or automatic guided vehicle (AGV) is a mobile robot that follows markers or wires in the floor, or uses vision, magnets, or lasers for navigation. They are most often used in industrial applications to move materials around a manufacturing facility or warehouse. Application of the automatic guided vehicle has broadened during the late 20th century.

Aircraft has received much attention for automation, especially for navigation. A system capable of autonomously navigating a vehicle (especially aircraft) is known as autopilot.

Autonomous boats can provide security, do research, or perform hazardous or repetitive tasks (such as guiding a large ship into a harbor or transporting cargo).

Underwater vehicles have been a focus for automation for tasks such as pipeline inspection and underwater mapping. See Autonomous underwater vehicle.

An example of an automated train is the Docklands Light Railway in London.

One of the current limitations for vehicular automation is the electrical power required to run the processors.[12]

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Vehicular automation - Wikipedia