Daily Archives: May 4, 2020

We are seeing AI technologies increasingly deployed across many parts of society. Around the globe, governments are rushing to mobilize vast amounts of capital to invest into AI innovation.

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The COVID-19 pandemic prompts us to rethink what is considered high- or low-skill work. Whose skills, whose labor and whose hours, exactly, are of value to society? What and who do we value and deem essential, and how do we compensate these workers (e.g., care work or teaching)?

These questions are particularly pertinent in the context of artificial intelligence and automation.

We are seeing AI technologies increasingly deployed across many parts of society. They are embedded into loan decisions, insurance policy decisions, government services like benefit distribution, spam-folder and auto-correct software, education, search engines and web recommendations, autonomous driving, navigation, precision medicine, policing, security and surveillance, immigration enforcement, military, supply chain management, industry and production and much more.

Around the globe, governments are rushing to mobilize vast amounts of capital to invest into AI innovation. This is often tied to the narrative of AI being central for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. A bulging landscape of national AI strategies has emerged over the past three years that sees vast funding pots being made available for AI research, innovation and national security projects. The federal government of Germany alone has committed 3 billion euros ($3.25 billion) for this purpose, with state governments pitching in additional funds for regional research institutions and public-private partnerships.

When we look at this global AI landscape, there is something important to note: We see a narrative of AI built on vast (and frankly overstated) expectations of its capabilities. The idea that artificial neural network architecture (and with it, deep learning) is the breakthrough technology for creating conscious, or even sentient, machines fuels the looming fear of robots taking our jobs. It prompts us to picture the Terminator, rather than a server farm, in our head.

The Terminator narrative of AI and automation very often depicts low-skill or blue collar workers as the most likely victims of automation. This framing is not only incorrect, but it is also a strategic distraction from the policy decisions that frame what we see as skillful work and what kind of labor we value.

This is thrown into sharp relief in the current global health crisis: If we truly had robots for all our essential low-skill services, then these services wouldnt be on the edge of breaking down to the extent they are now, which shows us how important these job roles really are.

For example, Amazon warehouses are automated to a significant degree, but they are not fully automated. Humans and machines work together and many crucial tasks, such as delivery, are still completed entirely by humans. The key part is that these humans are undervalued and at a much higher risk.

Their precarity is not only unevenly distributed along the fault lines of well-known inequalities, but it puts us at risk as a society at large. Not having health insurance or not being provided with protective gear fuels the spread of the virus among those workers who form the backbone of what is left of our economy.

There is a bigger context to this that we have to consider, and that often gets pushed to the sidelines by the AI hype. First, there is a systemic issue around wage stagnation and automation that extends into important questions around AI. Productivity growth (the proportional change in output growth per unit change in labor output) over the last three decades in the United States has indeed increased due to the introduction of labor-saving technologies, not just AI. Productivity used to grow in tandem with labor compensation; however, that has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Productivity has continued to grow, but wages stagnated.

This means that that laborers lost their stock in productivity and in infrastructure, but they did not necessarily lose their jobs. This shift has coincided with the dismantling of unions, leading to a decline in collective bargaining power and the rise of the gig economy.

In the meantime, employers have increased their own stock in crucial infrastructure just think about Amazons cloud empire but these developments are hardly entirely due to technological innovation and automation. They are the results of policy decisions.

In the U.S., automation is incentivized via tax breaks while human labor remains expensive. So we end up with a situation in which low-skill does not equal likeliness of automation ease of automation does.

Tax-incentivized ease of automation is a very different framing than low-skill. Contrary to many stories that we hear, tasks that we traditionally value as high-skill are just as much at risk of automation. For example, automating large-scale text analysis through natural language processing technologies is an attractive business proposition for law firms. Writing code, a skill currently valued highly and compensated accordingly, could also be automated.

This is how automation and the rise of inequality are linked: not through technological change, per se, but political and economic decisions made upstream. Not seeing this relationship clearly pits certain humans not all humans against machines in ways that have us focus too much on the machinery and make the wrong decisions around workers rights and well-being.

This change provides a window of opportunity for reconfiguring how we think about society, technology and the economy. Now is a good moment to draw out strategies for change. We need to stop talking about large-scale work replacements caused by robots, and remind ourselves that technological innovation and change follows policy and investment decisions. The state, not just the private sector, plays a central role here, as economist Mariana Mazzucato has reminded us.

We need public buy-in (quite literally) for the idea that successful, equitable automation means a sociotechnical system in which workers play a central role, whether through directly or indirectly working with machines, and are compensated accordingly.

This is not just a matter of doing the right thing. It is also a matter of getting society and the economy to a point of resilience, which is needed not least to secure the democratic process.

At the most basic level, wages need to be required to rise in tandem with productivity especially when it comes to low-skill work that keeps the most crucial parts of our economy afloat. This means deploying tools that are widely known and yet underused, such as minimum wage and universal health care, as well as worker unions (reestablishment is well underway in the tech worker movement), considerations of universal basic income and public investment in infrastructure.

Now is the time to make these changes.

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Now Is the Time to Rethink AI, Automation and Employee Rights - BRINK

MILWAUKEE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation, has completed the acquisition of Kalypso, LP. Based in the US, Kalypso is a software delivery and consulting firm specializing in the digital evolution of industrial companies with a strong client base in life sciences, consumer products and industrial high-tech.

Kalypso offers a full suite of consulting, digital innovation, enterprise technology and business process management services that enable the transformation of product design and development, production management, and client service models.

Rockwell Automation is best positioned to bring Information Technology (IT) and plant floor technology (OT) together. This acquisition within our Control Products & Solutions business segment will combine the convergence of plant-level and enterprise networks with Kalypsos capabilities, further enhancing the companys ability to implement and deploy technology and deliver even greater value to its customers.

Rockwell Automation announced its intent to acquire Kalypso in February 2020. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), is a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation. We connect the imaginations of people with the potential of technology to expand what is humanly possible, making the world more productive and more sustainable. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Rockwell Automation employs approximately 23,000 problem solvers dedicated to our customers in more than 100 countries. To learn more about how we are bringing The Connected Enterprise to life across industrial enterprises, visit http://www.rockwellautomation.com.

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Rockwell Automation has Acquired Kalypso, LP, Expanding its Connected Enterprise Consulting Expertise - Business Wire

New York, May 04, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global Factory Automation Platform as a Service Market 2020-2024" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891104/?utm_source=GNW 92 billion during 2020-2024 progressing at a CAGR of 20% during the forecast period. Our reports on factory automation platform as a service market provides a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis covering around 25 vendors. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The market is driven by the ease of IT and OT convergence, shift from CAPEX model to OPEX model in manufacturing industry, and increasing number of investments in smart factories. In addition, ease of IT and OT convergence is anticipated to boost the growth of the market as well. The factory automation platform as a service market analysis includes service segment and geographic landscapes

The factory automation platform as a service market is segmented as below: By Service Platform Professional service

By Geographic Landscapes North America APAC Europe South America MEA

This study identifies the increasing focus on edge computing as one of the prime reasons driving the factory automation platform as a service market growth during the next few years. Also, increasing number of strategic collaborations, and virtualization of industrial automation will lead to sizable demand in the market. The analyst presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters. Our factory automation platform as a service market covers the following areas: Factory automation platform as a service market sizing Factory automation platform as a service market forecast Factory automation platform as a service market industry analysis

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891104/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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The Global Factory Automation Platform as a Service Market is expected to grow by $ 2.92 billion during 2020-2024 progressing at a CAGR of 20% during...

The words automation or robots can be a little unsettling or cause a lot of anxiety in the business world.

Many people consider automation, robots, and AI to be the devil because, given enough time, it will cause eventual death to the jobs of all workers in all industries. Right?

Wrong.

Concerned alarmists hear stories about jobs being replaced by automation technology and automatically assume that employees are being placed on the chopping block as a result. The presumption is that organizations are eliminating employees alongside the tasks that are being automated, but this is not in sync with reality.

The truth is, because certain tasks are being extracted from human hands and handed off to robots, workers who once performed these duties are being freed up to contribute to their organizations in smarter ways. The idea is to work smarter, not harder. These tasks require the high-level thought processes of the human mind, those which automation software is incapable of performing.

In addition to being out of sync with reality, the idea that businesses are automating the process with the specific intent of reducing their internal headcounts is wrong for another reason. Generally speaking, downsizing is only a one-time cost saving, it is terrible for company morale, and seldomly a business objective unless they are financially struggling.

Fortunately, the robots are in fact not coming to enslave us as they do in cheesy 1950s sci-fi movies. Rather, bots and automation are here to alleviate us from having to perform mundane, administrative tasks and focus our energy and brainpower on the larger, more strategic, and important ones.

The reality of automation in procurement is far removed from the fantasy doomsday scenarios that loom inside the minds of many workers, and particularly those who occupy low-skill positions. Yes, it is true that some jobs have evaporated in the face of automations progression, but the fear is often exaggerated and misplaced.

For what its worth, many of the jobs thought to have been lost exclusively to automation have instead been outsourced to offshore locations. It remains true that the end result is still a job loss, but appropriate blame for the loss must be laid at the feet of the authentic culprit in order to avoid the needless perpetuation of unsubstantiated fears in automation.

When it comes to procurement, some of the fears associated with automation are justifiable, but much of the fear is illegitimate. Fortunately, all procurement workers have the competence to perform self-evaluations and to determine if they can be grouped within the sliver of procurement employees whose jobs are truly at risk of becoming casualties to automation, or if they are among the majority whose procurement jobs are secure.

If the majority of your time at work is spent copying and pasting information from Column A to Column B, your concerns about automation eliminating your job may be justifiable. The stark reality for those occupying data-entry positions is that there is statistical evidence demonstrating that automating their jobs results in more reliable productivity.

One of the strengths of automation is its ability to perform boring and repetitive tasks without losing any accuracy along the way. When people perform manual data entry throughout a full eight-hour workday, they tend to be far more accurate in their first four hours of data entry than in the final four. This is because the attention spans of human beings are naturally fatigued over time. By comparison, automation is demonstrably better at maintaining the attention to detail required to impeccably perform tasks like data-entry for long stretches of time.

If your responsibilities in procurement consist exclusively of data-entry work, and you find that you are altogether incapable of performing any other duties, it is best to come to this realization now and take steps to acquire some supplemental skills that would enable you to pivot and apply yourself to a more engaging set of duties.

Chances are, if your weekly work routine comprises one data-entry marathon after another, you probably dread the idea of traveling to the office each morning. Moreover, there exists an even greater likelihood that the mundanity of your work experience leaves you feeling wholly disconnected from both the mission of your organization and the function you perform in bringing company goals to fruition.

In the face of automation, if you realistically identify as a low-skill employee, you will benefit immensely by joining the multitude of workers that are actively acquiring valuable new skills and education that will allow them to provide value to either their present workplaces or their next one.

Now its time for the good news: The overwhelming majority of procurement employees have nothing to fear from automation. In fact, automation is one of the forces responsible for making procurement jobs more engaging, exciting, and personally gratifying.

This is because the automation of mindless tasks frees up more staff members to perform duties that require the operation of the human mind, which is something automation can never replace.

Weve been able to do more work with the same or fewer people, explained Frank Cuomo, Vice President of Sourcing and Procurement for Univision.

My goal is not to reduce headcount. That creates a false illusion of reducing costs. Reducing headcount gives you a one-time cost savings opportunity. Thats it, but if you keep that headcount and you have [the team] perform value-added activity, you can drive additional savings while leveraging automation to do the repetitive, non-value transactional activity. I want to extend the team and turn them all from tactical, transaction-performing employees to value-driven employees.

Even though many workers think of automation as the first step in a literal robot takeover, an analysis of what automation can and cannot due reveals the precise ways in which automation is limited in its effectiveness.

Despite the ability of automation to perform tasks with clear good-or-bad, yes-or-no, black-or-white outcomes, it fails in areas of execution that necessitate the analysis of multiple factors. The more complex the decision-making procedure becomes, the more rapidly the shortcomings of automation are exposed.

However, the unfailing precision of automation empowers procurement specialists to perform their jobs more cleverly, and with a greater volume of accurate information at their disposal. Realistically, many of the positions that low-level or entry-level procurement employees aspire to occupy are made available to them at an earlier career stage because automation has allowed manpower to be repurposed for projects requiring greater brainpower.

Chad McDonald, Director of Procurement and Treasury at The Andersons Inc., a diversified agribusiness says:

Automation [is] helping our organizations focus on things that are more strategic, rather than tactical. For example, we have eliminated approximately 80 percent of manual invoice processing for indirect payables because of these tools.

Rather than acting as a job destroyer, automation continues to act as a great enabler and performance enhancer within several industries, including procurement. The interaction of artificial intelligence and real intelligence is where the pinnacle of modern workplace efficiency is achieved.

With automation handling the responsibilities that felt valuable because of identifiable results they produced, like a filled-out spreadsheet, procurement teams can devote more time to roles that maximize their human attributes, like building relationships with suppliers, talking through limitations, performing on-site assessments and negotiating solutions.

Bots can provide supporting data to assist with tasks like these, but they lack any of the necessary faculties to perform the tasks that create the utmost value in the procurement realm.

For David Latten, Head of Indirect Procurement at Logitech, advancements in procurement automation have given his team more time to focus on driving value to the organization. Not too long ago, the technology did not exist to automate transactional procurement. And without that tech, there simply wasnt time to dive into the analytics.

He explains:

Historically, way too much time has been spent with transactional procurement. Weve started to automate a lot of those processes, giving my team the headspace for value-add procurement. This is part of the wider transition that were looking to do.

In fact, not only is it a falsehood to claim that automation is integrated into business practices for the sake of reducing the number of employees in the workplace, one of the underlying goals of automating practices is often to retain money for the sake of hiring more employees to fill critical roles and perform crucial tasks.

When it comes to procurement, automation permits an expansion of the supplier pool, along with simplified management of the bidding process. The net effect of the automation of just these two tasks results in greater savings with minimal effort.

For example, Chad McDonald says one of the benefits of implementing procurement automation has been the streamlining of the buying process. After negotiating an agreement with the same four suppliers for several months without a resolution, Chad realized there had to be a more efficient way to manage the process:

Instead of buying any one of these commodities from those three or four suppliers, were now able to bid and buy the commodity from twenty to thirty different suppliers. Imagine trying to manage a bid process with twenty to thirty suppliers to buy one item through a spreadsheet in email. It just doesnt work.

Despite the seemingly ubiquitous skepticism and corporate distrust, most 21st century employers are presently looking to retain as many employees as possible if those workers embrace the culture and mission of their organizations. Locating individuals that can seamlessly integrate their habits and personalities into the established protocols of a workplace is often a loftier challenge for the HR department than the challenge of acquiring talent that arrives prepackaged with every desired skill.

Oftentimes, it is more convenient to teach a new skill to a dependable employee than it is to hire a new person who is talented on paper, and then hope that person gels with the rest of the organization.

Not only are human beings incapable of performing mundane tasks like data entry at the accelerated rate of software and automation systems, but they also lack the ability to maintain the same precision after hours of performing these tasks. Conversely, the duration over which a routine is performed does not affect the ability of a computer to perform it. Therefore, automation is a logical step in the progression of the completion of administrative tasks.

The fear of automation and bots is legitimate, however, the benefits are clear. Understandably, the realization that a machine or a software system can perform a cherished job duty faster and more reliably than a human hand or mind can be daunting, and rightly so if it is your job that is being replaced.

Automation is a reality in nearly all industries, and not solely in procurement. If you possess skills that add clear value to the department of the company you serve, your managers will assuredly search for ways to use automation to magnify the effectiveness of your performance, because automation is primarily a tool designed for creation rather than destruction. Work smarter, not harder.

Learn more about automation in the workplace with beneficial information pulled from G2's content hub on AI and automation.

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Procurement Automation: The Bots Are Here to Help You - G2

Microsoft Corp. is in talks to buy Softomotive Ltd., a UK-based startup that makes software robots to automate tasks, according to people familiar with the matter.

If talks are successful, a deal could be announced as soon as the coming weeks, said the people, asking not to be identified because the matter isnt public. No final decision has been made and talks could still fall apart, they said.

The terms of the deal being discussed couldnt immediately be learned. Softomotive raised $25 million in 2018 from London-based investment firm Grafton Capital.

Representatives for Microsoft and Softomotive declined to comment.

Softomotive specializes in robot process automation technology, or software that helps companies save time and money by automating repetitive, manual tasks such as entering data into spreadsheets. The companys products are used in the health-care, banking, insurance and telecommunications industries, according to its website.

It competes with startups such as Automation Anywhere Inc. and UiPath, which was most recently valued at $7 billion and has been eyeing an initial public offering, Bloomberg News previously reported.

ALSOREAD:Facebook to pick up 10% stake in Mukesh Ambanis Jio: What the deal means

Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, posted better-than-expected quarterly results Wednesday, as increased remote work accelerated demand for its cloud-computing products. It said in November that it had added robotic process automation to its workflow product and has signed up customers.

Softomotive was founded in 2005 in Greece and moved its headquarters to London in 2015. Its website states that its a gold partner to Microsoft.

The former chief executive officer of UK-software firm Sage Group Plc, Guy Berruyer, was appointed chairman of the board last year.

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Microsoft in talks to acquire Softomotive, a robot process automation firm - Hindustan Times

The coronavirus pandemic has imposed several significant changes to organizations information-technology teams, such as increasing capacity and accommodating remote workers. Automation has been a means for these teams, already stretched to the limit, to meet these unprecedented demands.

With the help of the exponentially growing community of contributors and the countless playbooks available, theRed Hat Ansible Automation Platform seeks to guide companies toward automation to navigate this turbulence.

For folks that are in a traditional IT department just trying to get along day to day right now its Im just glad that I continueto have this Ansible thing. Theyre using Ansible Tower, said Robyn Bergeron (pictured), principal community architect, Ansible, at Red Hat Inc. They are glad that they can still manageto figure out how to collaborate with their coworkersin that type of environment.

Bergeron spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Medias mobile livestreaming studio, during the Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience. They discussed the need for automation in times of crisis and how Ansible is dividing its repository into collections. (* Disclosure below.)

In addition to creating a simple automation language to help organizations get started, Ansible provides ways for IT teams to solve doubts and problems that may arise in this journey, according to Bergeron.

We have folks on [Internet Relay Chat], we have folks on Stack Overflow, there are folks literally everywhere, she said. You can ask a question on Twitter, and it is a pretty large, friendly, global communityof people who have plenty of answers.

Thanks to a large number of contributors currently around 5,900 from all over the world Ansible has a huge information repository, which grows every day. To facilitate access and management of this data, the repository will be divided, Bergeron explained.

That stuff is actually getting split out into Ansible Collections that well have or repository thats actually more managed by the community, which will empower them to be able to make more decisions for us to be able to get things done more rapidly, Bergeron said.

Ansibles Collections will be pre-composed modules and roles around specific topic areas to bring flexibility and to save time and work. We have got a handful of contributors who are adding new modules into this new repo, but they are also helping us work out all the kinks in the contributor process and how it works that way, Bergeron concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLEs and theCUBEs coverage of the Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Red Hat Summit Virtual Experience. Neither Red Hat Inc., the sponsor for theCUBEs event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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Automation enables IT teams to face unprecedented demands - SiliconANGLE

Jeff Miller, director of project management, Interstates

Todays workforce has just experienced a transformational shift. Though many people were working remotely before COVID-19, there were still many jobs and situations where it was thought to not be an option. COVID-19 crushed that notion and forced us to find a way to make remote work viable. But to make it worktechnically or even logisticallyis much easier than finding a way to make it work within company culture.

The following article was something that I started writing before COVID-19 was a reality, yet much of it still rings true and can be applied to anyone who now finds themselves experiencing or leading in a remote environment.

The longer Im in the workforce, the more I see the importance of building culture in our organizations. In the words of Tamien Dysart and Vaney Hariri of Think 3D, a corporate culture consulting firm, A culture will emerge whether intended or not, but if its not one you invest in, it will certainly be one that you pay for. This is so true and important to remember as your company grows and changes. Interstates has been investing in building a high-performance, high-trust culture for as long as I have been a part of the company, and this culture is what drew me to come to work for them over 20 years ago.

A few months ago, we brought in Think 3D consultants to help us focus on ensuring that all our office locations have the same culture. We have found that many of our remote locations tend to take on a variation of our corporate culture. We expect, and welcome, some of these variances among our offices, as subcultures emerge to give employees in each a collective to identify with. But the key with having office subcultures is to ensure they still align with your organizational culture core identity (i.e., your values, your vision, your why for existing).

Maintaining a corporate culture is difficult even when you are with all your people every day, but it certainly seems even harder when you are separated from them by miles. It pays great dividends to really invest in setting, maintaining, and living out the valued tenets of your culture every day.

Jeff Miller is a director of project management at Interstates, a certified member of the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA). For more information about Interstates, visit its profile on the Industrial Automation Exchange.

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The Importance of Building Corporate Culture - Automation World

Thrio is alone among CCaaS solutions providers because it has created a novel, no-code solution framework, NPA, that recognizes different triggers from either agents or customers. - Dan Miller, Lead Analyst of Opus Research

CALABASAS, Calif. (PRWEB) May 04, 2020

Thrio, Inc. announced the general availability today of Thrio Native Process Automation. Thrio Native Process Automation enables complex, customizable, multi-step omnichannel interactions to occur with a few clicks or even fully independent of agents/end users. Thrio NPA enables enterprises to automate, accelerate, and elevate enterprise communications with clicks, not code. With a near infinite array of potential configurations of the NPA systems, Thrio Native Process Automation offers tremendous flexibility and unmatched simplicity in advancing enterprise communications.

Thrio NPA has attracted attention from noted industry analyst Dan Miller, Lead Analyst and founder of Opus Research. Thrio is alone among CCaaS solutions providers because it has created a novel, no-code solution framework, NPA, that recognizes different triggers from either agents or customers, Miller explains. Responding with consistent, correct answers at scale makes agents more productive, while improving customer experience.

Thrio NPA enables enterprises to get more done, faster and easier than ever, said Lance Fried, CMO. We are thrilled to enhance our award winning CCaaS platform with such forward looking capabilities, continued Fried. Thrios CCaaS platform drives efficiencies across the enterprise. From leading native process automation capabilities that can be combined into a vast array of unique workflows to record-fast deployments, Thrio customers love having an all-in-one contact center infrastructure that meets them -- and their customers -- wherever they are across the globe.

Customers can deploy Thrios NPA systems as part of a deployment of Thrios CCaaS platform.

About Thrio, Inc.Thrios team consists of leading contact center experts who develop and market modern, cutting edge technology and reliability that aims to redefine contact center industry standards. Thrios groundbreaking CCaaS platform features leading native process automation capabilities, inbound and outbound voice engines, a complete suite of digital channels (email, chat, SMS, social), and a range of AI tools built right in. To learn more, please visit http://www.thrio.com.

Thrio Contact:Lance FriedChief Marketing Officer858-248-0098Lance.Fried@Thrio.com

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Thrio Announces General Availability of Thrio Native Process Automation - PR Web

Products For Industry (PFi) is a Queensland-based engineering company that offers services from machine and component design through to complete factory builds, including bespoke turnkey automation and process solutions.

With over 150 tradesmen and engineers, the company has grown to be one of Australias leading service providers in the food Industry.

Managing Director Gavin Dunwoodie commented: Growth over the last five years can be attributed to the growing strength and innovation of Australian Food Industry and the pressing need for higher quality in design and service life.

Management from our key customer base has decided that importing low-cost machinery that consistently requires maintenance and improvement, have cost considerably more in the medium to long term, than sourcing locally designed and manufactured machinery, with local support and aftersales service.

PFi has invested heavily in software packages such as Emulate 3D, to accurately simulate the process and flow within each function of a machine, material handling project or automation project.

This investment in the front end of the project gives our client the comfort that our proposals will actually work, Dunwoodie commented.

Too often we are called in to assist with changes to existing projects to ensure they meet the specifications they were originally promised.We are happy to assist any client but it makes far more sense to engineer the project correctly at the beginning than fix it at the end, said Dunwoodie.

PFi has completed numerous turnkey robotic packaging projects throughout Australia and with the low Australian Dollar, opportunities will begin to present in the coming months. Automation is the key to margin and volume output, with less down time and reduced maintenance costs of capital equipment and infrastructure.

To view this video, click here.

For more information, visit https://www.pfi.com.au/food

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Bespoke turnkey automation for the food industry - Foodprocessing

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo., May 4, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Field Squared, Inc.TM, the industry's first Field Service Automation Platform, announced today that Health Testing Solutions has selected Field Squared to drive digital transformation of the company's mobile occupational medical services operations.

"We evaluated other software providers. No competing solution could automate our onsite medical service delivery with the breadth and depth of capabilities as Field Squared," said Darren Sanders, CEO at Health Testing Solutions. "We're growing and we're excited that Field Squared will grow with us. With Field Squared, we're future-proofed."

Servicing many Fortune 500 companies, Health Testing Solutions is a fast-growing mobile occupational medicine services provider that specializes in occupational medical surveillance screening. From audiometric exams, pulmonary function tests and drug/alcohol screening to employee physical exams, Health Testing Solutions required software that was as mobile as their operations.

Field Squared was chosen to enable Health Testing Solutions with the capabilities to improve its customer experience as well as to provide field technicians with an intuitive mobile app to conduct visits more efficiency, thereby improving the employee experience.

Health Testing Solutions will utilize Field Squared's scheduling and dispatching, work order management, real-time notifications, and mobile forms. To increase field efficiency and reduce field data entry errors, mobile health care forms will be pre-populated with customer details.

"Health Testing Solutions is a great example of an innovative company. They understand the need for digital processes in the still heavily paper world of health care," said Christopher James Camut, Director, President and CEO at Field Squared. "We are pleased to welcome them into the Field Squared family of customers."

About Field SquaredField Squared is the industry's first unified Field Service Automation Platform. As a cloud-based SaaS solution, Field Squared is flexible, scalable and purpose-built to optimize the efficiency of the mobile workforce in the field. Focusing on business process automation, Field Squared enables enterprises to digitally transform, automate and streamline their field service operations, from the frontline to back-office systems. Learn more at http://www.fieldsquared.com/company.

Media Contact:Tiffany AastedVice President of Marketing at Field Squaredpr@fieldsquared.com720-845-6683

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Field Squared Selected by Health Testing Solutions to Automate Its Mobile Occupational Medical Services Operations - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel