Daily Archives: June 19, 2017

When Combating Crew Fatigue, Automation Has Its Rewards And Risks – Forbes

Posted: June 19, 2017 at 7:10 pm


Forbes
When Combating Crew Fatigue, Automation Has Its Rewards And Risks
Forbes
In 2013 the US Federal Aviation Administration introduced new regulations for aviation crew flight time and duty time, known as FAR 117. While those changes incorporated the latest in fatigue science up to that point, similar rules have not been ...

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Amazon: Whole Foods Plan Hints at Price Cuts, Automation – Fortune

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When Amazon completes its acquisition of the grocery chain Whole Foods, announced on Friday, the e-commerce giant plans to cut prices at the premium grocer while maintaining its reputation for high-quality boutique foods. The push for lower prices could be fueled by automation, staff reductions, and inventory changes.

The plans were first reported by Bloomberg and attributed to a source familiar with them. According to that person, Amazon also plans to add automated checkout systems at Whole Foods, which may include the technology under evaluation at the AmazonGo convenience store in Seattle.

That would mean fewer workers running checkout lanes. An Amazon representative quoted in the report denied that any layoffs or automation initiatives were planned for Whole Foods.

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How will Amazon reduce Whole Foods' legendary "Whole Paycheck" reputation? Its plans could also include inventory changes that would eliminate the most expensive items from shelves and introduce more private-label goods.

Whole Foods' reputation has become a major pain point for the grocer, which has steadily lost sales to lower-priced competitionincluding Amazon. In February, after six straight quarters of falling sales, Whole Foods closed nine stores . It has already been lowering prices and experimenting with a lower-priced store format with fewer employees, 365 by Whole Foods.

True or not, the rumor of job cuts and automation points to a potential sticking point in the pending acquisition. Whole Foods has been recognized as one of Fortunes 100 Best Companies to Work For every year since the list was created in 1998. It's described by employees as a workplace offering fair pay and a welcoming environment.

Amazon, on the other hand, has been described as having an intense workplace culture marked by infighting and high turnover among staffers. Work conditions in its warehouse-like fulfillment centers have been described as demanding and even dangerous . Those divergent approaches to labor could well clash when the acquisition closes.

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Unpacking Programmatic: How Automation Impacts The Digital … – AdExchanger

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"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Todays column is written by Dennis Buchheim, senior vice president of data and ad effectiveness at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and general manager of theIAB Data Center of Excellence.

Soon, truckers may be out of a job. Why? Automation. Factory work continues to dwindle, again, because of automation. Artificial intelligence, the driver du jour of high valuations in tech, is all about you guessed it enhancing automation.

Already this year, the Harvard Business Review has published more than a dozen articles related to the topic. Automation is a global force across all industries, and its being wrestled with at the highest and lowest echelons of organizations and society in general.

But we in advertising dont talk about automation. Instead, we use the word programmatic, an increasingly ambiguous industry term that cant hold the weight of the conversations that need to be had. Now dont get me wrong: Jargon can be OK. Every industry has it. But any language we choose to use must enable rather than disable communication. And in this case, its beginning to hurt.

A semantic and contextual shift is necessary. To achieve new levels of efficiency and effectiveness, digital advertising leaders need a new lens through which to perceive and discuss the massive changes going on in their companies because of, yes, automation.

The term programmatic originated years ago to describe elements of digital advertising campaigns performed by software. The word was generally used to distinguish transactions executed by machines, especially via real-time bidding, from those negotiated and executed by flesh-and-blood salespeople and media buyers. At first, the word was apt. But times have changed.

The rapid evolution and extensive adoption of data-fueled technology has pushed us into a post-programmatic world. Today, partially or wholly machine-driven processes are woven throughout the entire digital advertising supply chain. We need to talk in depth about automation across not only transactions but also planning, creative development, data management, decisioning, personalization, measurement, verification, optimization and more. This is all more far-reaching and complicated than the original notion of programmatic advertising. And yet were still using the term and concept of programmatic. Its a vast oversimplification and cause of confusion.

Automation is a universally understood term that refers to all of the ways that technology is replacing or augmenting humans. Use of this term within advertising will force all of us to unpack whats been obscured by the idea of programmatic, and it will empower discussions about the role automation plays or could play in specific supply chain processes, as well as the utility that can be provided by technology and data relative to their costs and, most importantly, the value that can be created or destroyed by automation.

These conversations need to be had and can lead to a spectrum of benefits. The benefits notably include increased transparency and control related to tools, data, ad inventory, vendors and associated costs; more efficient and more effective advertising; and better consumer experiences. The industry has long tended to rush toward adopting automated technologies, but relying on zeros and ones instead of a person isnt always cheaper or faster and the black boxes that have developed between buyers and sellers often cause more cost than benefit.

Questions such as When does automation save time? and When doesnt it? and What is the optimal mix between humans and machines? need to be answered for each application of automation in a business.

Now, a change in language alone clearly cant resolve all of these open issues. But a shift in perspective toward the challenges and opportunities created by automation across the supply chain is the foundation of these explorations.

The digital advertising ecosystem has achieved a scale so gargantuan and personalized that humans cant do all of the driving. Its up to business leaders to determine when their teams should step on the gas, tap the brakes or even change lanes and when a machine should do this for them.

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Americans Split On Impact of Workplace Automation – Facility Executive Magazine

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(Image: PRNewsfoto/ American Staffing Association)

Workplace automation is a polarizing issue for Americans, according to the results of a new American Staffing Association Workforce Monitor survey. About equal percentages of respondents say that automation in the workplacerobots or artificial intelligencewill be a good or a bad thing for the future world of work.

About one-third (34%) of Americans say automation will be a positive development for the workforce in the next 10 years or morecompared with 31% who say it will be negative: 35% are neutral on the matter or just dont know.

However, more than four in five Americans think that increased automation will revolutionize work (83%)and that this transformation is inevitable (82%). A substantial majority think that automation will fundamentally change the quantity (79%) and types (68%) of jobs available in the U.S. Seven in 10 (72%) say its increased use will lead to higher unemployment.

But most Americans are in denial that automation will ever affect their work life. Nearly three quarters (73%) do not believe that their work can be easily replaced by robots or artificial intelligence, and 85% agree that the human factor outweighs any benefits from mechanizing their job. Nine in 10 (90%) say that there are some tasks that automation will never be able to take over from humans.

Automation is revolutionizing the who, what, where, and how people will work in the future, said Richard Wahlquist, ASA president and chief executive officer. The ASA Workforce Monitor found that nearly nine out of 10 (87%) Americans believe that to succeed in this new world of work, additional training will be needed.

Harris Poll conducted the survey online within the U.S. on behalf of ASA March 79, 2017, among a total of 2,133 U.S. adults age 18 and older. Results were weighted on age, education, race/ethnicity, household income, and geographic region where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the U.S. population.

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GM’s Cruise Automation Wades Into HD Mapping to Aid … – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

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The Drive
GM's Cruise Automation Wades Into HD Mapping to Aid ...
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A small autonomous-cars company owned by General Motors Co. is getting into the high-definition mapping business, a move that could help the Detroit auto ...
GM's Cruise Automation Wants to Make HD Maps for Self-Driving ...The Drive
GM lets Cruise Automation run free - General Motors Company ...Seeking Alpha
GM lets its Cruise Automation self-driving unit work autonomouslyAutomotive News (subscription) (blog)

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AnalyticsBeyond the Value of Information – Automation World

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For some time, we said that data is the new oil to indicate how much value and power there is in having data available. Having data means having knowledge of whats happening and being able to objectively evaluate phenomena that otherwise could only be guessed. Then we started to say that having the data wasnt enoughits more important to apply context to data so that it can be transformed into information. Data is important, but providing context makes it much more meaningful, and the information can then be used to make better informed decisions.

This is even more significant when we are talking about the high volumes of data collected from manufacturing operations. These huge amounts of dataprocess and production datacan be difficult to interpret if you look at it without context. You can, for example, collect the temperature of an oven every second in several areas of the equipment, and have a very detailed dynamic view of whats happening in it. But it doesnt mean a whole lot if you dont know which SKU was being produced, what the setpoint was, and maybe what the humidity was of the semi-finished good that you were cooking or drying. So context transforms data in information; context is the refinery of data.

But today, even information is not enough. Transforming Big Data into Big Information is powerful, but it can still be difficult to interpret and understand. Moreover, when you apply context to data, you are basically applying a model that combines variables you know are correlated in some way. But is that the only existing correlation? Or are some variables correlated to others in way you do not know and maybe are not so evident? The exponential growth of available data and information makes it difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate all the possible relationships, especially when you start to consider data coming from different domains (e.g. process and business data) or data coming from different stages of the value chain.

This is when analytics becomes important and can transform information in the same way context transforms data. Analytics is a generic word to identify a set of different activities or applications of statistical analysis or business intelligence, sometimes related to a specific domain, others to a specific type of content. Frequently, it indicates the capability to apply statistical models or mathematical algorithms to a data set, distilling information that otherwise couldnt be retrieved and that can be used to predict possible situations or to support manual decisions or even to implement automatic decision processes.

In manufacturing, analytics often refers to a system that can analyze a set of data and automatically identify relationships between variables. In this way, the system builds a mathematical model that can be used to predict the state or value of a single variable based on the behavior of the others. One of the most used examples is predictive maintenance where, based on the data collected from several sensors installed on an asset, the system can predict if the asset will fail in the near futureoptimizing the maintenance process, and minimizing the maintenance costs and possible impact of a failure on production at the same time.

But this is just a very simple case to understand. Even within manufacturing operations that are considered best in class, the use of advanced analytics could reveal further opportunities to increase yield. This was the case at one established European maker of functional and specialty chemicals. It boasted a strong history of process improvements since the 1960s, and its average yield was consistently higher than industry benchmarks, so they were skeptical that there was much room for improvement. However, several unexpected insights emerged when the company used neural-network techniques (a form of advanced analytics available in many products) to measure and compare the relative impact of different production inputs on yield. By adjusting the process parameters based on the evidence, the chemical company was able to reduce its waste of raw materials by 20 percent and its energy costs by about 15 percent, thereby improving overall yield.

More and more opportunities become available by mixing data coming from different contexts. In this case, not only can analytics apply a mathematical model to very large volumes of data, but it can identify patterns and correlations that otherwise would be extremely difficult to identify, since nobody has full knowledge of the data set.

Analytics can really change the way a company is run, providing insights with a much larger value than information and data. Analytics is the third level of knowledge that promises to transform dramatically how people will manage factories, both at the operations level and at the business level.

Luigi De Bernardini is president of Autoware Digital and CEO of Autoware, a certified Control System Integrators Association (CSIA) member based in Vicenza, Italy. For more information about Autoware, visit the Autoware profile on the Industrial Automation Exchange.

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When will automation take over the trucking industry? Scientists now have an estimate – Mic

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There's no shortage of studies and analysis suggesting that robots can potentially take our jobs. But exactly how far away are we from losing our livelihoods to automation?

Artificial intelligence experts with the BBC surveyed 352 scientists about automation, including some of the world's leading experts on machine learning. According to the BBC analysis, there is a 50% chance that machines can take over all human jobs in 120 years.

But some fields are at greater risk than others. Let's focus on one big one: trucking.

Truck drivers may be replaced by automated technology as early as 2027. According to the researchers, artificial intelligence could be maneuvering trucks on the road within the next decade.

"All jobs are being impacted by technological change some more than others," said Nicholas Wyman, CEO of the Institute for Workplace Skills and Development and author of Job U: How to Find Wealth and Success by Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need. "Driverless trucks are now used extensively in the mining industry and it's certain this technology will impact other parts of transport and distribution."

Estimates from the American Trucking Association suggest there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States and the industry, as a whole, employs more than 8.7 million people. According to the Los Angeles Times, 1.7 million American truckers could be replaced by self-driving trucks over the next decade.

Trucking jobs are the most common jobs in 29 out of 50 states in the U.S., and there are millions of people working for the trucking industry in non-driving positions.

Uber-owned Otto is perfecting the technology that will let trucks drive themselves.

It's not such a far-fetched idea, as progress is being made in automating truck driving. Take self-driving truck company Otto, which was created by former Google employees and acquired by Uber last August. The company's system lets trucks drive for long stretches of time without needing a human driver. The technology was successfully tested in Colorado in October when a self-driving truck delivered 50,000 cans of Budweiser.

If perfected, autonomous trucks could offer heightened efficiency and safer roads; one in seven fatal truck accidents is caused by driver fatigue. For those currently in the trucking industry, it's not all bad news. How much of a threat self-driving trucks pose to drivers depend on the level of automation: if drivers are still required to be in trucks, then jobs are secure, MIT Technology Review reports.

Wyman says truck drivers need to be open to adapting to the changing landscape of their field. "They need to embrace change it's happening so hoping it will go away is not an option," Wyman said. "Truck drivers should look for opportunities to refresh and reboot their current skill sets."

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Our View: Port truckers today’s indentured servants – AZCentral.com

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Editorial board, The Republic | azcentral.com Published 8:09 a.m. MT June 19, 2017 | Updated 7 hours ago

A USA TODAY Network investigation found a predatory scheme that ensnared thousands of immigrant truck drivers at the port. Scott Hall

Reyes Castellanos lost his house after too much debt mounted. He continues to work as truck driver, working long hours in the port of Long Beach. (Photo: Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun)

Evil comes in many guises, but one of its most noxious is when people of means exploit people of no means and bleed them of the few possessions they own.

This was the story of indentured servitude in colonial America and of slavery in the pre-Civil War South. Its the story of Mexican immigrants who picked lettuce by short hoe and wrecked their backs for a pittance.

John Steinbeck captured the outrage in The Grapes of Wrath. And the memorable 1940s film of that novel can still evoke anger at the cruel California land barons who abused Oklahomas itinerant poor.

How trucking companies forced drivers into debt, worked them past exhaustion and left them destitute

This type of mistreatment should have been left to the dark corners of our past, but here we are again, abusing the least among us. An expos by Brett Murphy, a reporter for the USA TODAY Network, tells the story of large trucking enterprises in Southern California exploiting immigrant laborers and leaving them with virtually nothing.

People who speak little English and live meager lives are used to build corporate profits shipping goods that will eventually be sold in some of Americas best-known retail stores.

The so-called port truckers, Murphy reports, move almost half of the nations container imports out of Los Angeles ports.

Hundreds and possibly thousands of drivers are trapped in a system of forced labor that is almost impossible to comprehend by modern sensibilities.

The companies in Southern California have spent the past decade forcing drivers to finance their own trucks by taking on debt they could not afford, Murphy writes. Companies then used that debt as leverage to extract forced labor and trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute.

One man caught in this trap was Samuel Talavera Jr., who in 2013 leased a truck from his employer to deliver dishwashers and tires to warehouses.

The job was so demanding, he had little time at home, working up to 20 hours a day for six days a week and sleeping in the company parking lot. Eventually his truck broke down, and the 67 cents he was making a week was not nearly enough to make repairs. His company would fire him and seize his truck, Murphy wrote, along with $78,000 he had paid on it.

While these truckers haul the goods of big retailers, those retailers can avoid accountability because they dont directly hire port trucking companies. This is a classic case where the little guy gets screwed, said Jeffrey Klink, a former fraud prosecutor and corporate ethics professor at the University of Pittsburghs Graduate School of Business.

The civil-rights leader Julian Bond describes the California port truckers as the new black tenant farmers.

The abuse appears to be widespread.

Since 2010, at least 1,150 port truck drivers have filed claims in civil court or with Californias labor commission, Murphy reports.

Judges have sided with drivers in more than 97 percent of the cases heard, ruling time after time that port truckers in California cant legally be classified as independent contractors, he writes. Instead, they are employees who, by law, must be paid minimum wage and cant be charged for the equipment they use at work.

But the court rulings have not addressed drivers allegations that their employers are barring them from leaving work or requiring them to work hours that exceed federal law.

With so much legal action over a span of years, the abuses seem chronic and cannot be ignored by federal and California authorities.

Fortunately the kind of worker exploitation seen in Californias port trucking industry is far more rare than it was in John Steinbecks America.

I dont know of anything even remotely like this, said Stanford Law School professor William Gould, speaking of the port trucking lease contracts.

As Americans, we are tasked to ensure that such things become even more rare. The abuse of port truckers must end now.

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Times Opinion – Top Five Things – Crookston Daily Times

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The Times' Newsroom staff weigh in on their top five things they'd like to see happen locally or around the world.

Keep busy, city council

Whether you voted for any of the people who currently occupy Crookston's eight city council seats or you wish we had eight different ones, you have to be encouraged by the latest development that has the council's Ways & Means Committee meeting once a week and not the usual once every two weeks, until further notice, simply because they have so many of the proverbial irons on the fire. After all, wouldn't you be a bit discouraged if the council decided to scale back its committee meetings to once a month because they didn't have enough important issues to talk about? They do have a lot on their plate right now, that's for sure. Here's hoping they accomplish some meaningful things at these more frequent discussions.

Check out some youth baseball this weekend

Crookston Parks and Recreation will be hosting a boys 10U and 12U baseball tournament starting at 2 p.m. on Friday, June 23 and again at 9 a.m. on Saturday, June 24 at Highland Complex on Diamonds 2-6. Bring the whole family out for a weekend of fun and make sure to let the kids loose at the playground and Splash Park, too.

People need to move toward an equalist society

Equalism is the belief that all human beings, regardless of gender, race, age, and ethnic origin, are totally equal. We, as a collective human species, need to move away from the patriarchal and discriminatory society that we live in and make a sincere effort to treat everyone equally. It is not acceptable that gender based wage gaps and suspicion and unequal treatment based on skin color still exist in our world today. We have come a long ways since slavery existed in the United States and women were not allowed to vote, but we need to go further. Each and every person deserves an equal chance at life, regardless of what they look like, what their gender is, or where they are from. Let us hope for a future that is free from the racist and sexist mindsets that prevent people from reaching their full potential and keep us from transcending into a truly equal society.

Maddie Everett, summer intern

Twins brass, be patient and stick to long-term plan

Twins backup catcher Chris Gimenez had his tongue somewhat planted in his cheek when he said before this past weekend's series with the Cleveland Indians that the Twins needed to "punch them in the mouth." Gimenez played for the Indians last year, after all. But Twins fans aware of how paper-thin the pitching staff is had to cringe when Gimenez uttered those words and, sure enough, the Indians swept the four-game series. This Twins team simply lacks the pitching to maintain their current encouraging pace. They have two decent starters, one mediocre one, and two bad ones. Their bullpen is mostly a train-wreck. So what do they do? Try to make moves to make the playoffs this season? The team's brass would be wise to resist temptation and instead keep their eyes on the bigger picture, which is transforming this franchise toward long-term, sustained success.

Stop by the Crookston Farmers Market kickoff this Thursday

The Crookston Farmers Market will kick off their season on Thursday, June 22 at the Downtown Square located on 3rd Street and North Ash. There will be locally-grown produce, baked goods, and more. Theyre always looking for more vendors as well so visit their Facebook page for a membership application. The Crookston Farmers Market is open to everyone weekly on Thursdays from 3-6 p.m. so keep it local and shop fresh.

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Rep kicks against abolition of tenure policy for perm secs, directors … – NIGERIAN TRIBUNE (press release) (blog)

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A member of the House of Representatives , Hon Kehinde Agboola representing Ekiti North 1 (Oye -Ikole) Federal Constituency of Ekiti state at the Weekend kicked against the suspension of tenure policy for Permanent Secretaries and Directors in Federal Civil Service of the Federation, saying that the action if not reversed would be counterproductive.

This came just as the lawmaker is canvassing for the immediate reversal of the existing 60 years retirement limit policy for Permanent Secretaries and Directors in the federal civil service, except for those whose tenure would extend to the retirement age.

Speaking with News men in Abuja on the motion he presented on the floor of the House to that effect last Thursday at the Plenary, Hon Agboola argued that if their occupation of offices are not tenured, the workers in these categories may spend upwards of 10 years or more in office, their depriving workers down the line from succeeding them before their own retirement ages.

The motion titled, Need to reinstate the abolished civil service tenure policy, by Hon Kehinde Agboola, was unanimously adopted through the vice vote

The members while debating the motion were of the opinion that if the positions were not tenured, as it used to be the practice, promotions and upgrading would hardly be achieved.

President Muhammadu Buhari had a year ago ordered the suspension of the tenure policy in the federal civil service.

Introduced by former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Steve Oronsaye, under the administration of late President Umaru YarAdua, the plan had prescribed two terms of four years each for permanent secretaries of ministries, while directors were entitled to an eight-year tenure.

With the new directive, civil servants could now stay in service until they are 35 years in service or they turn 60.

Leading the debate on the motion, Agboola urged the House to direct the government to reinstate the abolished policy as it would further intrinsically result in politicizing the system and scaling up systemic corruption contrary to the dictates of a government that has anticorruption precept as one of its cardinal objectives.

The lawmaker argued that one of the ways the non-tenured workers corruptly enrich themselves while in office is deploring the biometrics tools to alter and falsify their work records.

Agboola also appealed to the House to mandate its Committee on Public Service Matters to ensure compliance and report back in four weeks.

According to him. Its sad that when a permanent secretary and directors are allowed to stay in office more than necessary, in the name of working to attain the 35 years work period or 60 years retirement age limit, they keep altering their records, especially their ages through the biometrics option

This does not create opportunity for workers down the line to move up. Let their offices be based on tenure as it used to be so that as they complete the required years, they can go and rest.

They can leave and begin to mentor others. Some of them can even join politics. We need them here, but if they remain they until it gets to the point they cannot do anything again, it will not be good for the system,

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