Monthly Archives: February 2017

Boeings latest jet, the 737 MAX, should start delivering to airlines by May, even as 737 production ramps up to 47 jets per month. To handle it all at the Renton plant, Boeing has installed a new automated wing spar assembly line and re-choreographed how it finishes the wings.

As Boeing prepares to deliver its first 737 MAX airplane and to boost production of single-aisle jets 12 percent both by May the Renton factory has geared up with additional refinements of its already humming manufacturing methods.

Boeing showed off the latest innovations inside its Renton factory on a tour of the 737 wing facility Monday, showcasing impressive new robotic machines as well as more efficient ways of deploying its mechanics. While it introduces the new 737 MAX, the company is also ramping up its 737 production rate to 47 per month, from 42.

Vice president and general manager Keith Leverkuhn brimmed with good news about the program schedule and the new jets performance.

Leverkuhn said the MAX flight test program has just one test to complete and should get certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within days or weeks.

He said the fourth flight test airplane last month completed a 100-flight-hour tour of the Pacific Rim including a cold soak test in Yakutsk, Russia, and a stop in hot and humid Darwin, Australia that produced just a single squawk, the term used to denote the airplane performing even slightly off expectations.

Having already built 13 of the initial MAX 8 models, all now sitting around Renton airfield awaiting FAA certification, Boeing showed off the first of the large MAX 9 models sitting on the assembly line and almost ready to roll out.

Its advanced winglets, sweeping up and down from the wingtip, set it apart from the current model 737s on the adjacent line, with their traditional upward-swept winglets.

Also very different were the MAXs new LEAP engines.

With a fan diameter of more than 69 inches, the LEAP seemed to dwarf the older CFM-56 engine, with its 61-inch fan, on a nearby current model 737-900ER.

The MAX 9 will begin flight tests in April, Leverkuhn said.

Soon after, the smaller MAX 7 will come along, and then the high-density version that budget airline Ryanair covets, the MAX200, seating 199 passengers.

And Leverkuhn said Boeing is actively seeking input from airlines on whether it should add one more even larger model, the MAX 10, to the family.

To make all this possible, dramatic changes are well underway inside the Renton factory.

New automated machines are revolutionizing assembly of the wing spars the long beams along the leading and trailing edges of each wing.

And on the other side of the building, crews of engineers and mechanics who finish the wings by installing all the wiring, plumbing and control systems have figured out how to accommodate the coming rate increases up to 52 jets per month next year, then 57 jets per month in 2019 without adding another line to their area.

In a plant that has steadily morphed into the most productive airplane factory in the world, Barry Lewis, director of 737 Wing Operations, declared on Monday that the transformation is almost complete.

On one side of the wing building, Boeing currently has 10 large machines that it introduced in 1997 when it developed the current model of the 737.

Known as Automated Spar Assembly Tools, or ASAT machines, these drill and fasten the heavy spars that are the structural spines along the edges of the wings.

To increase 737 output by 36 percent over the next three years, Boeing at first thought to buy some more ASAT machines, which were designed and supplied in the late 1990s by Mukilteo-based engineering firm Electroimpact.

But Boeing realized it doesnt have room. The ASAT machines are huge, with a tall, wide gantry straddling the 60-foot-long spar.

So all 10 of these machines will be phased out by year end, replaced by just two fully automated Spar Assembly Line (SAL) cells newly designed by Electroimpact and already in place.

Each cell contains two Electroimpact drilling and fastening machines, much smaller than the ASAT machines, that zip along a single spar simultaneously, drilling and filling as they go.

Critically, alongside the business end of each machine is a robotic arm that swings in and changes the drill head and the fastener whenever a different type of hole is to be drilled.

On the old ASAT machines, changing the tools is done manually, adding a great deal of down time. In the new SAL cells, thats all automated.

At one end of the SAL cell, two operators sat before a control console Monday intently watching eight big screens, including four video screens monitoring every move of the machines.

In future, whether we need two operators (or just one) per cell is to be determined, Lewis said.

The new SAL cells, occupying 80 percent less floor space than the ASAT machines they replace, are just the latest push in Rentons drive toward automation.

In recent years, Boeing has transformed the way it installs systems in the 737 fuselages by shifting to a moving line. It also has automated the way it assembles the skin panels for the wings using huge Electroimpact machines.

Earlier, final assembly of the wings was made more efficient and more automated with a move from putting them together while hanging vertically in fixed tools to a more ergonomic and faster horizontal build line, in which the wings are assembled lying flat.

And yet Lewis deflected concerns about robots replacing humans, pointing out that Boeing will be hiring modestly in Renton over the next few years, not losing workers.

Were going up in rate, he said. More planes means more jobs.

In another sector of the wing building, where the wings are completed with all the wiring and ducting added, the second set of MAX 9 wings awaited delivery Monday evening to the final assembly line.

There, Lewis praised his team of engineers and mechanics for figuring out how Boeing can increase throughput as high as 57 pairs of wings per month without adding any new machinery.

Its people thinking of better ways to do it, said Lewis.

The workers divided up the work into smaller packages, which could be accomplished with more people working on the wing simultaneously yet with their moves choreographed so as not to get in each others way.

Darwin Stachowiak, a team lead on the wing installation, said that by having front line employees think through the most efficient way to get the work done, weve really streamlined the way we build these wings.

The 737 will be 50 years old in April.

Yet if all the production increases in Renton go to plan, and Boeing decides to go forward with the MAX 10, Boeing will within a few years be making more 737s than ever before, and airlines will be flying five new variants of the jet.

Right now, everything is on track to accomplish just that.

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Boeing ramps up automation, innovation as it readies 737MAX | The ... - The Seattle Times

DUBAI // Increased automation and the introduction of artificial intelligence into the workplace will significantly change work, the World Government Summit heard, and governments must prepare citizens.

A panel of experts that included Elizabeth Rhodes, basic income research director at Y Combinator, which helps fund start-up businesses, and Jonathan Matus, founder and chief executive at Zendrive, a transport consultancy, discussed the downsides of technology on jobs that can be easily automated, such as driving.

"This is an area where we can make an important distinction. Driving on the highway is much easier than driving in the city," said Mr Matus. "So, the autonomy of driving in trucks can come faster.

"Instead of building trucks that will drive all the way from the warehouse to the destination, companies can use autonomy for highways and a human driver within the city.

"Conglomerates such as Walmart will embrace this, and in the next 7 years, robots will drive a massive number of miles."

With automation, political unrest will could increase, and governments will need to invest in training people on a long-term basis to prevent unemployment, said Mr Matus.

When machines replace jobs, there will be a real cost in educating people and filling the deficit of lost wages, said Ms Rhodes, who has been working on a pilot programme for a universal basic income for everyone.

"The idea to give people a basic income as one of their human rights has always existed and is considered as a great measure to curtail crime. We are studying how this move will affect labour supply. If we give people money for nothing, they may also just stop working. Therefore, we are researching the impact of universal basic income on the individual and macro-economic level."

newsdesk@thenational.ae

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Artificial intelligence, automation 'will significantly change the way we work' - The National

With new technological developments and their ability to capture the market in the next few years, Padamraj K Bagrecha decided to enter the field of home automation systems. After more than a decade of experience in this line, he developed his own product Digilux, a home automation system.

He founded the company in May 2016 and headquartered it in Bangalore.

Padamraj shares, "It was after extensive research and product testing of almost seven to eight years that the final product was launched in the market."

Mahaveer K Bagrecha: He has had experience in the semiconductor, electronics, e-surveillance, and hospitality industries. His background in finance and operations helped in the foundation of Digilux Automation Pvt Ltd.

Mr. MAK: He has experience in system architecture. He played a huge role in developing their automation solution.

Padamraj K Bagrecha: He has over a decades work experience in the fields of home automation, e-surveillance, security, and high-end AV solutions.

In total, Digilux is a 10-member-strong team today.

Digilux is into manufacturing of home automation systems. This system can be integrated with the IoT platform for energy monitoring and can be further used for feedback and data analysis.

It is a retrofit home automation solution to control an entire home through the touch of a few buttons on your mobile.

It consists of a touch-based switch control system with a handheld remote. A gateway for smartphone control is available.

IR, IP, and RS232 controllers for third-party device control.

RGB controller, energy monitoring, and apps for a smart living. It lets you integrate the product with any existing or new controllers as well. It works within a wide power range and hence can incorporated in different power conditions.

Below are the available functionalities in the Digilux home automation system

According to Padamraj, "Our revenue has steadily grown over the past few years. In the next three years, our forecast is to generate a revenue five times the current figure.

Builders providing home automation solutions to their home-owners comes as a huge market segment for them. Individual home owners and corporates for boardroom solutions are their target market.

Mahaveer adds, "With the increasing awareness of home automation, we see a surge in the market where 50-60 percent of new homeowners will go ahead with automating their homes."

60-70 percent of people renovating their existing homes can opt for this technology.

They intend to build a dealer/system integrator model where they tie up with SI's across India to provide the solution to end users.

For the intentional market, they plan to have a distributor network in place. They already have some experience centres present in Bengaluru, Goa, Mysore, Hassan, Mangalore, Bhubaneswar, and more.

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Digilux, a retrofit home automation solution to control your entire home through the touch of a few buttons on your ... - YourStory.com

Its called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Curiously, rapid developments happening in fields previously thought to be disjointed are now amplifying each other.

We are seeing this in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing, genetics and biotechnology. On a different tangent altogether, smart systems are able to address a diverse set of issues ranging from climate to supply chains. What must be underscored here is a sense of urgency. Perhaps less than five years is what we have to enable this transition.

A WEF (World Economic Forum) report which was released last year referred to an alarming piece of statistic65% of children entering primary school today will end up working in jobs that dont yet exist. Alarming if we dont prepare now, but it can be hugely rewarding if we do, as it provides an opportunity for humans to acquire better skills. This isnt a robotic apocalypse as some quarters would have us believe.

Its a time to AQT (pronounced act).

As an illustration, AQT is a popular automation framework developed by Tech Mahindra to deliver continuous increase in business efficiency (faster, cheaper, better) for our stakeholders and ourselves through intelligent automation. AQT is implemented using our AQT Toolkit to achieve year-on-year productivity improvement, straddling across task-driven to knowledge- driven (basic, robotic, autonomous and cognitive). A simple formula acts as the guiding principle here: A (automation) = Q (quality) / T (time).

Machines continue unabated in pursuit of mimicking humans, and seem to be making astounding progress. If we see from an Indian IT industry standpoint, automation of jobs has already led to decoupling of productivity and employment.

At the time industry revenue was $100 billion, there were three million people in direct employment. It is expected that the next 100 will require anything between 1-2 million people only.

Martin Ford, in his popular book, The Rise of Robots, has estimated the amount of data stored globally to be in the range of thousands of exabytes (an exabyte is equal to a billion gigabytes). And, Moores Law is very much applicabledata doubling every three years.

All this data comes from different sources and resides in unstructured form.

It is but inevitable that skills in data science/computer science will be in great demand, as we leapfrog towards data-based decision-making in business, including almost every other aspect of life.

The idea of machines and humans coexisting as co-workers to complement each another is arguably a more realistic one than AI replacing humans completely. Repetitive jobs, including those with a very high degree of predictability are likely to get replaced by machines. This may not be such a bad thing after all. It may actually free up humans to enable them to become knowledge creators or curators in pursuit of higher cognitive skills.

It is estimated that by 2020, in most occupations, at least a third of the desired core skill sets will be comprised of skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job.

With such powerful and complex technologies doing the rounds, there will be a distinct need for people with great persuasive skills who are able to put forward the value proposition cogently and clearly, in the minds of buyers. Perhaps EQ (emotional quotient) will have a greater appeal than what it has today?

The global tech spend in 2014 was approximately $2.7 trillion. By 2025, this figure is expected to touch $4 trillion or thereabouts. Now in 2014, all of 90% constituted traditional tech spend and only 10% was towards digital.

However, in 2025, it is widely believed that this ratio would be 60:40 in favour of digital. Is the talent pipeline robust enough to enable this shift? We dont want a supply side constraint.

There is a shortage in the market today of people who are equipped with the necessary skills to ace digital opportunities. Undeniably, the rate of obsolescence is very high. In the earlier industrial revolutions, it often took decades to put training systems in place.

Obviously, this one will not allow such leeway, and so it is essential that this challenge be taken up by stakeholders (government, industry and academia) in tandem by complementing one another, rather than outdoing each other through silos. The future will be about collaborative models which will aid differential approaches to sync together in a giant-sized jigsaw.

There is also a dark side to digital which continues to raise its ugly head through unending cyberattacks. Battlefields of the future will be in cyberspace, as keyboard warriors try to wrest control. At Nasscom, we believe cybersecurity to be a $35 billion opportunity by 2025, and there is a definitive charter to create 1 million jobs, and also spawn 1,000 start-ups in this domain.

However, behind every cloud is a silver lining. The Indian IT industry has ridden many disruptive waves in the past, and this time too, it will be no different.

The future will be tamed by those who are able to unlearn quickly, pick up new skills, work in flatter organizational structures, and collaborate effectively, as turnaround times reduce dramatically and go-to-market gets quicker.

Let us see this as an opportunity to re-skill ourselves to add value, stay relevant and move continually up the proverbial value chain that we keep referring to.

C.P. Gurnani is chairman of Nasscom and managing director of Tech Mahindra Ltd.

First Published: Wed, Feb 15 2017. 01 12 AM IST

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Re-imagining the automation disruption - Livemint