Monthly Archives: September 2021

Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arbys drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks.

It doesnt call sick, says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the AI voice at its Arbys franchise this year in Ontario, California. It doesnt get corona. And the reliability of it is great.

The pandemic didnt just threaten Americans health when it slammed the U.S. in 2020 -- it may also have posed a long-term threat to many of their jobs.

Faced with worker shortages and higher labor costs, companies are starting to automate service sector jobs that economists once considered safe, assuming that machines couldnt easily provide the human contact they believed customers would demand.

Past experience suggests that such automation waves eventually create more jobs than they destroy, but that they also disproportionately wipe out less skilled jobs that many low-income workers depend on. Resulting growing pains for the U.S. economy could be severe.

If not for the pandemic, Siddiqi probably wouldnt have bothered investing in new technology that could alienate existing employees and some customers. But its gone smoothly, he says: Basically, theres less people needed but those folks are now working in the kitchen and other areas.

Ideally, automation can redeploy workers into better and more interesting work, so long as they can get the appropriate technical training, says Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands. But although thats happening now, its not moving quickly enough, he says.

Worse, an entire class of service jobs created when manufacturing began to deploy more automation may now be at risk. The robots escaped the manufacturing sector and went into the much larger service sector, he says. I regarded contact jobs as safe. I was completely taken by surprise.

Improvements in robot technology allow machines to do many tasks that previously required people -- tossing pizza dough, transporting hospital linens, inspecting gauges, sorting goods. The pandemic accelerated their adoption. Robots, after all, cant get sick or spread disease. Nor do they request time off to handle unexpected childcare emergencies.

Economists at the International Monetary Fund found that past pandemics had encouraged firms to invest in machines in ways that could boost productivity -- but also kill low-skill jobs. Our results suggest that the concerns about the rise of the robots amid the COVID-19 pandemic seem justified, they wrote in a January paper.

The consequences could fall most heavily on the less-educated women who disproportionately occupy the low- and mid-wage jobs most exposed to automation -- and to viral infections. Those jobs include salesclerks, administrative assistants, cashiers and aides in hospitals and those who take care of the sick and elderly.

Employers seem eager to bring on the machines. A survey last year by the nonprofit World Economic Forum found that 43% of companies planned to reduce their workforce as a result of new technology. Since the second quarter of 2020, business investment in equipment has grown 26%, more than twice as fast as the overall economy.

The fastest growth is expected in the roving machines that clean the floors of supermarkets, hospitals and warehouses, according to the International Federation of Robotics, a trade group. The same group also expects an uptick in sales of robots that provide shoppers with information or deliver room service orders in hotels.

Restaurants have been among the most visible robot adopters. In late August, for instance, the salad chain Sweetgreen announced it was buying kitchen robotics startup Spyce, which makes a machine that cooks up vegetables and grains and spouts them into bowls.

Its not just robots, either -- software and AI-powered services are on the rise as well. Starbucks has been automating the behind-the-scenes work of keeping track of a stores inventory. More stores have moved to self-checkout.

Scott Lawton, CEO of the Arlington, Virginia-based restaurant chain Bartaco, was having trouble last fall getting servers to return to his restaurants when they reopened during the pandemic.

So he decided to do without them. With the help of a software firm, his company developed an online ordering and payment system customers could use over their phones. Diners now simply scan a barcode at the center of each table to access a menu and order their food without waiting for a server. Workers bring food and drinks to their tables. And when theyre done eating, customers pay over their phones and leave.

The innovation has shaved the number of staff, but workers arent necessarily worse off. Each Bartaco location there are 21 now has up to eight assistant managers, roughly double the pre-pandemic total. Many are former servers, and they roam among the tables to make sure everyone has what they need. They are paid annual salaries starting at $55,000 rather than hourly wages.

Tips are now shared among all the other employees, including dishwashers, who now typically earn $20 an hour or more, far higher than their pre-pandemic pay. We dont have the labor shortages that youre reading about on the news, Lawton says.

The uptick in automation has not stalled a stunning rebound in the U.S. jobs market -- at least so far.

The U.S. economy lost a staggering 22.4 million jobs in March and April 2020, when the pandemic gale hit the U.S. Hiring has since bounced back briskly: Employers have brought back 17 million jobs since April 2020. In June, they posted a record 10.1 million job openings and are complaining that they cant find enough workers.

Behind the hiring boom is a surge in spending by consumers, many of whom got through the crisis in unexpectedly good shape financially -- thanks to both federal relief checks and, in many cases, savings accumulated by working from home and skipping the daily commute.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics, expects employers are likely to be scrambling for workers for a long time.

For one thing, many Americans are taking their time returning to work -- some because theyre still worried about COVID-19 health risks and childcare problems, others because of generous federal unemployment benefits, set to expire nationwide Sept. 6.

In addition, large numbers of Baby Boom workers are retiring. The labor market is going to be very, very tight for the foreseeable future, Zandi says.

For now, the short-term benefits of the economic snapback are overwhelming any job losses from automation, whose effects tend to show up gradually over a period of years. That may not last. Last year, researchers at the University of Zurich and University of British Columbia found that the so-called jobless recoveries of the past 35 years, in which economic output rebounded from recessions faster than employment, could be explained by the loss of jobs vulnerable to automation.

Despite strong hiring since the middle of last year, the U.S. economy is still 5.3 million jobs short of what it had in February 2020. And Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, calculated last month that 40% of the missing jobs are vulnerable to automation, especially those in food preparation, retail sales and manufacturing.

Some economists worry that automation pushes workers into lower-paid positions. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University estimated in June that up to 70% of the stagnation in U.S. wages between 1980 and 2016 could be explained by machines replacing humans doing routine tasks.

Many of the jobs that get automated were at the middle of the skill distribution, Acemoglu says. They dont exist anymore, and the workers that used to perform them are now doing lower-skill jobs.

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Do we need humans for that job? Automation booms after COVID - USA TODAY

Kennebunk High School graduate Alex Jones isn't looking to make his Biddeford-basedag-tech startupthe next unicorn. His company, Farmhand Automation, doesn't need a billion-dollar valuation to achieve the kind of scale he has in mind.

Jones said the end goals he and his team are pursuing with their battery-powered farming robots include supporting sustainable growth for small and mid-sized local farms. That, he said, would empower smaller growers toparticipate more fully in food distribution systems, which are currentlydesigned for and dominated by large-scale farming operations.

"Our baked-in mission is to advance the decentralization of sustainable agriculture across the United States," he said. "That is really what we are focused on."

As a public benefit corporation,Farmhand Automation is a business with an additional charter that outlines its mission, Jones said. And that mission has been attracting financial backing from a variety of sources.

The company, which was founded in 2019,raised nearly $500,000 from "passionate angel investors" both locally and across the countryand matching funds from theMaine Technology Institute, Jones said. That allowed the company to spend two years of development with a team of about three people, he said.

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Last month, Farmhand Automation was announced as a winner of a $250,000 grant through theMaine Clean Energy Innovation Challenge, which is a joint initiative of MTI and the governor's energy office. The company aims to raise another $500,000 for the next phase of its work, Jones said, so the team can add three positions:a systems engineer, a software developer to focus on customer-facing applications, and a second mechanical engineer to focus on the tools the Farmhand Automation robots will use.

Jones said the company is focusing onautomatingthree key farming tasks: weeding, planting and soil cleanup. (Harvesting remains a more challenging task to automate, he said.) The top focus right now is on weeding.

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The current design, which looks something like a Mars rover that travels up and down rows of vegetables, marks locations of where to place plants and records those positions using GPS that way, when the robot comes through to agitate the soil around the plants without disturbing the plants themselves, it can do so without using sight technology, Jones said.

"We're trying to create a robot that is not any faster than a person, at this point. It drives at walking speed. It moves tools around the same level a person would. And what we want to do is ... we want to price this in such a way that your annual cost on this thing for the first five to seven years is going to be about the cost of a part-time laborer."

Although the robots are still being designed and built, Farmhand Automation has set a target price of $25,000 for a base model, which is the same cost as an entry-level tractor, Jones said. With a bank loan, farmers would pay off the robot in five to seven years, with a plan to keep using it for a total of 20 years, he said, likening the business model to that used for solar energy investments.

When asked about the impact these robots would have on farmworkers, Jones said the idea is to facilitate an alternative to the realities of industrial farming that underliethetypical American grocery-shopping experience.

"The general person's food experience is being driven by underpaid, imported labor, (a situation) that is completely unethical. And we don't really have structures around that to resolve that issue," he said.

If more local farmers can produce more crops, then perhaps local produce can account for a much greater percentage of the food Americans consume, Jones said.

"There's a fundamental scaling problem that we need to solve here," he said. "My argument is I don't want more farmhands in the world;I want more farmers."

By automating the back-breaking and monotonous parts of farming, robots could help to support the local food movement as it looks for ways to expand beyond the saturated farmer's market distribution model, he added.

"We don't have enough farms operating in large-enough scale that canreach enough people to make the local food movement work, and I think that is something the local food movement is trying to grapple with," he said. "There is a shift going on right now where the local food movement is starting to identify that it has mostly been based off of this mostly bucolic idea of farming, that it's a beautiful past-time kind of thing. And it's just not. It's a business, like anything else, and it's arguably a lot like manufacturing, where you've got to do a lot of the same thing all the time, and you've got to get it out to people on time and with high quality. Those are the pressures people who actually get into farming start to face."

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Jones was quick to point out that Farmhand Automation isn't the only company building robots to help farmers grow their crops. And he's not entirely sure what solution or solutions may ultimately work for small and mid-sized farms. But he said he's happy to be pushing in a promising direction.

Those interested in contacting the team or leaning more can visitFarmhandAutomation.com.

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Farmhand Automation: How Maine ag-tech startup hopes to empower local farmers with robots - Seacoastonline.com

LONDON and AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Conceived as a secure and robust robotic process automation (RPA) tool, Blue Prism has had a successful history as a trusted automation partner with financial institutions, from retail banking to wealth management. Twenty years later, its leading enterprise intelligent automation platform is delivering substantial business value in multiple industry verticalsacross Forbes Global 2,000 and mid-marketbusinesses.

Blue Prism's success across industry verticals can be attributed to a strong focus on addressing the most important industry-specific business drivers with automation, for greatest impact.In energy and utilities, Blue Prism's intelligent automation platform is helping improve, among other things, customer experience, contact center operations, outbound customer service and the use of omni-channel virtual agents.

This sharp focus on industry solutions has contributed to Blue Prism's substantial growth, particularly within industries such as energy and utilities, the public sector, and manufacturing.

"As part of their transformation programs, companies and organizations in each industry are looking at automation as a way to improveefficiency, quality, service innovation, workers' effectiveness, visibility into operations performance, auditability, compliance and risk management," says Roberta Bigliani, group vice president, head of insights, IDC Europe. "Companies are on the journey to more extensively apply automation for value creation across multiple areas: in customer operations and engagement, citizen and patient experience; in core business processes, from the underwriting process in insurance, to tax management, or payment management; and in asset operations being factories, networks, pipelines, facilities or other physical and financial assets."

In Insurance, Blue Prism continues to break new ground, using intelligent automation to streamline the entire customer experience, from quotes to underwriting, mid-term adjustments, renewals, and customer service.

In utilities, Blue Prism is working with prominent businesses such as Consolidated Edison, Inc., one of the largest investor-owned energy-delivery companies in the United States, to help realize improvements across the front and back office, including areas such as customer operations, supply chain, and finance. With dozens of automations in production, intelligent automation has proven a key component in supporting Consolidated Edison's goal of delivering safe, reliable, quality service at the lowest attainable cost for its customers.

Jack Deem, finance director at Consolidated Edison, said:"Blue Prism intelligent automation is becoming increasingly utilized across our organization and is a key factor in driving operational efficiency and effectiveness. By reducing the time our people spend on repetitive, manual tasks, we are able to redeploy the hours saved to both achieve bottom-line cost savings as well as invest additional time in value-added analytical activities."

In healthcare too, intelligent automation is creating new patient engagement models that have been critical in addressing digital transformation. Blue Prism solutions have played an important role in the fight against COVID-19. Areas of deployment include patient scheduling, remote consultations, logistics and supply management, vaccine management, and many more.

In manufacturing, a successful growth area for Blue Prism, an American agricultural machinery manufacturer has future-proofed its business using the robotic operating model (ROM). The company has automated over 60 processes, returning more than 94,000 work hours to the business every year and has deployed Blue Prism digital workers in finance, purchasing, HR, manufacturing, marketing, and IT.

In telecommunications, British Telecom (BT) has used Blue Prism as its service provider of choice to roll out over 400 automations across the business.In one instance, it has stabilized the demand on contact centers impacted by the pandemic by using automation to deploy a fault diagnostics robot, providing an entirely new digital channel for its customers to reach BT. Customers can communicate issues to BT's robot via text, automatically trigger diagnostic checks, and book an engineer visit to investigate the issue.

"I see BT becoming a more interesting place to work. We'll be a much more responsive organization," said Christian Smart, head of process automation, BT. "Using Blue Prism's digital workers, we'll be able to do what we do faster, which will lead to hugely improved customer experience and, ultimately, shareholder value."

Now an integral component for digital transformation, Blue Prism's industry specific solutions are proving their versatility and importance in driving key strategic business outcomes.

Notes to editors:

Blue Prism is a global leader inenterprise robotic process automation (RPA) andintelligent automation, transforming the way work is done. We have over 2,000 customers in over 170 countries and 70 industry verticals, 30%intheForbes Global 2,000,creating value with new ways of working by unlocking efficiencies and returning millions of hours of work back into their businesses.Our enterprise digitalrobots offer high-scale automation that is secure, smart,accessible toall,enabling centrally managed human and digital workforces of the future and freeing up humans to re-imagine work.To learn more visitwww.blueprism.comand follow us on Twitter@blue_prismand onLinkedIn.

2021 Blue Prism Limited. "Blue Prism", the "Blue Prism" logo and Prism device are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Blue Prism Limited and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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SOURCE Blue Prism

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Blue Prism Sees Growing Demand for Its Intelligent Automation Across All Industry Sectors - inForney.com

Solutions Reviews listing of the best robotic process automation companies is an annual mashup of products that best represent current market conditions, according to the crowd. Our editors selected the best robotic process automation companies based on each vendors Authority Score; a meta-analysis of real user sentiment through the webs most trusted business software review sites and our own proprietary five-point inclusion criteria.

The editors at Solutions Review have developed this resource to assist buyers in search of the best robotic process automation companies to fit the needs of their organization. Choosing the right vendor and solution can be a complicated process one that requires in-depth research and often comes down to more than just the solution and its technical capabilities. To make your search a little easier, weve profiled the best robotic process automation companies all in one place. Weve also included platform and product line names and introductory software tutorials straight from the source so you can see each solution in action.

Note: Companies are listed in alphabetical order.

Platform:Appian RPA

Description:Appian RPA enables users to quickly build and deploy bots with visual, low-code design in a secure cloud environment. IT teams can centrally manage, monitor, and deploy Appian RPA, as well as third-party bots and end-to-end processes to increase scale and performance. Additionally, users can automate complex processes with case management capabilities that handle exceptions and ad-hoc activities. Appian RPA also allows users to orchestrate data, systems, and web services without complex coding. The provider was recently named a visionary in the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation.

Platform:Automation 360

Description:Automation 360 is a cloud-native and web-based automation platform that combines RPA, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics. The provider also offers its Bot Store, which is the first and largest marketplace with more than 1,200 pre-built, intelligent automation solutions. Automation 360 automates business processes across all systems and applications, including SaaS and legacy applications. Additionally, the platform can transform every piece of structured and unstructured data in any document into a consumable digital asset through AI and ML with the IQ Bot.

Platform:Blue Prism

Description:Blue Prism offers a diverse product portfolio, which includes intelligent automation, robotic operating models, Blue Prism Cloud, automation lifecycle management, and a process assessment tool, among other tools. Blue Prisms intelligent automation platform is available for on-prem, public cloud, hybrid and multi-cloud environments, as well as SaaS deployments. The provider also partners with top-tier security technologies in order to guarantee system integrity with strict user access controls, multi-level change approvals, and a segregated interference-free processing environment.

Platform:TruBot

Description:Datamatics TruBot is a team of virtual assistants that automate repetitive and rule-based processes without any manual intervention. When powered with AI, it has the ability to recognize and replicate human actions, creating a more intelligent bot that can make informed decisions. The solution is sector agnostic and can be deployed across banking, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, and logistics industries. TruBot also delivers enhanced security with privileged security access powered by CyberArk.

Platform:AssistEdge

Description:EdgeVerve Systems AssistEdge RPA platform is a good fit for major enterprise companies, especially those particularly reliant on consumer customer service. The solution is scalable and helps organizations modernize customer service, improve business processes, and enhance operational productivity. EdgeVerve also offers AssistEdge Discover, which tracks application usage and user activity on any device and identifies processes to be automated in order to improve productivity. Users can also speed up their business process automation capabilities with AssistEdge Cloud RPA.

Platform:Kofax RPA

Description:Kofax RPA integrates applications through any layer in the application stack; the presentation layer, database layer, or API layer. Users do not need any programming skills, access to complex APIs, or lengthy consulting projects when integrating with the platform. Additionally, Kofax RPA enables users to record, map, and analyze business processes and applications, including interactions through desktop and internal and external applications. This provides insight into existing processes and tasks that digital workers can automate. The solution also delivers robot lifecycle management and scalable deployment.

Platform:Laiye RPA

Description: With its advanced AI features, Laiye RPA can automate manual and repetitive tasks, which frees up staff to work on higher-value tasks. The platform comes with more than 400 pre-set commands that can be used for a variety of projects, including those with a series of complex processes. Laiye RPA Creator delivers production tools for RPA development with different views in local language, including visual view and code view to provide readability and efficiency. Additionally, Laiye RPA Commander enables users to log in and assign their own roles and operate with the resources in their group to control the entire automation process.

Platform:Microsoft Power Automate

Description:Microsoft Power Automate connects with other Microsoft products, enabling users to link new and legacy systems and take advantage of partner connectors. Microsoft also offers two modes for this platform: Attended RPA or Unattended RPA, which gives users the ability to decide how involved they want to be with their RPA processes. Microsoft Power Automate empowers all employees to analyze processes, understand bottlenecks, and gain insights through a guided Process Advisor feature.

Platform:NICE Robotic Process Automation

Description:NICE Robotic Process Automation is comprised of software robots with the ability to automate end-to-end processes in an unattended manner, or directly support employees from their desktop in an attended fashion. NICEs Automation Finder feature for process mining is included with the attended solution, NEVA. NEVA works side-by-side with employees from any location, guiding them through complex processes. This technology leverages Desktop Analytics and machine learning to accurately pinpoint which business processes should be automated. NICE RPA also increases throughput capacity, enabling businesses to achieve ROI targets faster.

Platform:Pega Robotic Process Automation

Description:As part of the Pega Platform, Pega Robotic Process Automation delivers a range of capabilities. The solution offers Pega RPA Auto-balancing, a feature designed to ensure that a users investment in process automation is yielding positive results. Additionally, the Pega Email Bot utilizes natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence to automatically triage, route, and respond to emails, giving employees time to focus on other tasks. The platforms Workforce Intelligence tool also makes use of AI to determine where and when to automate for optimal impact.

Platform:UiPath RPA Platform

Description:The UiPath RPA Platform gives anyone in an organization the ability to build and use robots. Developers with more experience can use a rich development environment with Studio, while citizen developers can automate simple, day-to-day tasks for themselves and their team with StudioX. UiPath also enables users to test any and all of their processes with the platforms Test Suite. Additionally, the vendor offers a range of ways for staff to engage with bots through Action Center, UiPath Assistant, and Chatbots. Users can also create and manage governance policies with Automation Ops.

Platform:WorkFusion Intelligent Automation Cloud

Description:WorkFusion Intelligent Automation Cloud brings together the technology needed to implement intelligent automation at scale in a unified platform that can be deployed quickly without the need for third-party tools, data scientists, or custom coding. The platform also offers intelligent, pre-trained bots that organizations can additionally train on their custom data. The bots can also understand complex documents with unstructured data to digitize, classify, make decisions, and extract data. The bots learn with each new document and example, thereby continuously increasing the level of automation.

Editor at Solutions Review

Tess Hanna is an editor and writer at Solutions Review covering Backup and Disaster Recovery, Data Storage, Business Process Management, and Talent Management. Recognized by Onalytica in the 2021 "Who's Who in Data Management." You can contact her at thanna@solutionsreview.com

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The Best Robotic Process Automation Companies to Consider for 2021 and Beyond - Solutions Review

Red Hat shared that leading banks such as Alliance Bank (Malaysia) and the Asian Development Bank (Philippines) have adopted Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform as its enterprise-grade, agentless automation platform in their journey to the cloud. Both these financial institutions represent examples of early adopters for infrastructure automation technology to support business growth while increasing resiliency and reliability.

Application modernization is among todays top IT priorities. According to a 2020 Forrester report commissioned by Red Hat, automation is also an organizational necessity; three out of five respondents reported automation as one of their firms top initiatives, even amid competing priorities like adoption of cloud, containers and security management.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, together with Red Hat OpenShift, provides a powerful, scalable platform for this transformation. With dynamic global challenges requiring rapid adjustments in operational domains and environments, automation projects help mitigate the complexity that these conditions produce and provide faster responses to changing business requirements.

ADB and Alliance Bank are examples of financial services organizations in Southeast Asia that are deploying Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate repetitive and manual tasks, orchestrate complex workflows, improve processes and offer agility to deploy applications faster with fewer human interventions.

Bringing together teams for improved collaboration, these new services and offerings ultimately connect business managers with automation leaders to better align automation strategies with the needs of the business and expand how automation can be used.

These Southeast Asian banks are using automation to innovate and transform their businesses:

2021 has demonstrated that organizations need to accelerate, rather than pause, their digital transformation efforts. A key part of this journey should be network automation, which allows users to manage policy, enforcement and processes at the domain level. Several financial organizations in ASEAN are deploying Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate applications and IT infrastructure, while providing a simple language to help facilitate DevOps practices. Automation allows organizations to architect intelligently with their existing infrastructure, while bringing legacy IT toward a cloud-native future, said Josep Garcia, vice president and general manager for growth and emerging markets, Red Hat.

As Alliance Bank competes in a fast-moving and dynamic financial services marketplace, automation increasingly becomes an essential component of our cloud infrastructure. Red Hat OpenShift includes built-in automation capabilities that help our teams focus on creating and updating valuable services. By expanding our automation capabilities, we can free up our resources to implement new processes and applications and to upscale. This supports our overarching goal of delivering banking the Alliance Way: to be more empathetic to customers needs and deliver innovative digital solutions that are fast, simple, and responsive, said Ken Yong, Head, group transformation office, Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad.

ADB was looking into technological solutions to improve operations efficiency and effectiveness by automating repetitive tasks. As we use both public and private clouds, we needed a solution that would allow us to provision our infrastructure like a tap turn it on, higher, or off as needed. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform allows us to build secure infrastructure thats supported with automation. Ansible also gives us a common language, documentation and developer toolset to make the process more efficient. Now, Ansible is our common language for orchestration in CI/CD for infrastructure as code. This ultimately frees up bandwidth for our people to innovate, and better focus on serving ADBs members and partners in order to promote social and economic development, said Krista Lozada, senior IT specialist (innovation & engineering), Asian Development Bank.

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Asian Development Bank and Alliance Bank choose Red Hat platform to better align automation strategies - Help Net Security

Two common asset management metrics whose relevance has grown in importance even as new analytic technologies such as predictive maintenance have emerged are mean time to repair (MTTR) and mean time before failure (MTBF). Though these metrics have been used widely for years, they dont always get the attention they deserve, which has led to some confusion among end users about how to properly calculate them and apply their results.

Automation World connected with Sam Russem, senior director of smart manufacturing solutions at Grantek, a system integration and engineering services company, to learn more about MTTR and MTBF for a recent episode of the Automation World Gets Your Questions Answered podcast series.

Defining the termsStarting our discussion with a focus on MTTR, Russem said, It is essentially the average time it takes to get an asset back up and running once it's gone down. So, if your case packer goes down at noon, and you get it back up and running at 12:30, that took 30 minutes to repair. That's your time to repair. Then, when you average those downtime periods together over a certain time span, thats your mean time to repair over that period of time.

In terms of MTTRs application, Russem explained that, if the MTTR on most of your assets is in the 10 to 20 minute range, but one key piece of equipment has an MTTR measured in hours or days, this kind of insight can help to prioritize your maintenance schedule and keep production running.

Sam Russem, senior director of smart manufacturing solutions at Grantek.Another common use of MTTR is to evaluate maintenance teams, or even maintenance individuals. Maintenance always wants to be driving MTTR down because that means they're getting things back up and running quicker in the event of a downtime. But if you look into the data, and you realize that a certain maintenance technician consistently has a lower MTTR than another technician, this can be a training opportunity to spread that workers knowledge around. It can also tell you a lot about how your maintenance team has performed.

Russem said that MTBF is much like MTTR in that they both focus on the length of specific downtime events for a piece of equipment. The primary difference is that MTBF is much more of an indicator of your machine and asset performance than it is a personnel assessment, he said.

Its a really interesting metric to examine over time because, if you have an asset with an MTBF of 30 days and that figure drops to 28 days, then 25 and continues to fail, that indicates the asset is due for maintenance or some other type of remediation to get it to fail less frequently.

Maintenance benefitsBeyond the application of MTTR and MTBF to evaluate maintenance teams and asset performance, these metrics can also be used to track repair rates not just by asset, but by specific fault code on that asset. This can help further prioritize maintenance activities and organize the maintenance teams schedule, said Russem.

If a specific machine is showing a in-feed jam fault, and we know it usually takes 15 minutes to repair, that can really help your maintenance team organize their scheduling, he said. On the operations side, think about how MTTR ties into operationally focused metrics. For example, if you are improving your MTTR, you should see that reflected in a higher asset availability and a higher OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) score.

Your OEE system could be pulling data directly from PLCs, whereas your CMMS is likely tied to maintenance logs. Then, when operators or maintenance personnel log data into one of these systems, discrepancies between how those two different systems are reporting can highlight information about how well your operations and maintenance are in sync, or not.

MTBF can also be used to identify opportunities for planned downtime. For example, if a machine is failing every two weeks, and there's a planned downtime for preventative maintenance on that machine, that can indicate opportunities to bring those MTBF numbers up a little bit higher and keep things running longer, said Russem. On the operations side, lower MTBF numbers mean that production assets are failing more frequently and hurting overall productivity. In other words, there are some situations where operators could directly influence MTBF time; for example, if you have an operator who knows how to tweak machine parameters to increase throughput. But that may be decreasing MTBF by making the line go down more often and causing overall productivity to decrease. Thats why MTBF is one of those numbers that can help you understand and balance the overall effectiveness of a line and its influence on overall throughput.

Metric calculationFortunately, MTBF and MTTR are fairly simple to calculate. As Russem noted, all you really need to calculate these metrics is to know when your assets are down and when they're back up.

As long as you have those pieces of information, you can calculate MTTR and MTBF, which is why there are many pieces of softwarelike OEE and CMMS (computerized maintenance management systems)that can do these calculations based on maintenance and operator logs, said Russem. But it doesn't mean, if you don't have one of those systems, that you can't get this information yourself. As long you have that asset availability information, youre just one Excel sheet and a quick calculation away from figuring out and tracking these numbers.

Essentially, any software connected to your machine data or receiving operator or maintenance log information is capable of helping you obtain these metrics.

Using CMMS and OEE software to calculate MTTR and MTBF can also help you zero in on more difficult-to-determine operational insights. Russem noted that MTTR and MTBF can become more interesting when numbers [from different software systems] don't match up. For example, your OEE system could be pulling data directly from PLCs, whereas your CMMS is likely tied to maintenance logs. Then, when operators or maintenance personnel log data into one of these systems, discrepancies between how those two different systems are reporting can highlight information about how well your operations and maintenance are in sync, or not.

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Understanding MTTR and MTBF Maintenance Metrics - Automation World

60% of hospitals and health systems that adopt lean principles also use automation; larger organizations report highest use of automation efforts

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Sept. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AKASA, the only Unified Automation company for healthcare revenue cycle management, released findings from a new survey, highlighting how hospitals and health systems that embrace lean principles also often include automation as a strategy to achieve success. Nearly 70% of hospitals and health systems reported using lean principles for business process improvement and more than 60% of those respondents also say they employ automation within the revenue cycle to reduce waste and improve efficiency.

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"We are seeing that for organizations actively employing lean management principles, leaders quickly recognize the value of automation within the revenue cycle and conversion to automation happens swiftly especially for larger organizations with more overhead," said Amy Raymond, head of revenue cycle operations at AKASA. "Revenue cycle automation reduces variation and increases productivity key tenets within the lean principles. Automation can also serve to expand revenue capture, accelerate cash collections, improve clean claims rates, increase first pass-payments and decrease the overall cost to collect."

Commissioned by AKASA, the survey fielded responses from nearly 400 chief financial officers and revenue cycle leaders at hospitals and health systems across the United States through the Healthcare Financial Management Association's (HFMA) Pulse Survey program between May 27, 2021 and June 28, 2021. The national survey was designed to assess the adoption of automation in revenue cycle operations at hospitals and health systems across the U.S.

About AKASAAKASA is building the future of healthcare with AI. The only Unified Automation company for healthcare, AKASA uses the same machine learning approaches that made driverless cars possible to provide health systems with a single solution for automating revenue cycle operations. AKASA's unique expert-in-the-loop approach, Unified Automation, combines modern machine-learning with human judgment and subject matter expertise to provide robust and resilient automation. Unified Automation adapts to the highly dynamic nature of revenue cycle operations and has been purpose-built for healthcare. AKASA enables health systems to decrease their cost to collect so they can invest more in patient care and be better stewards of the healthcare dollar. AKASA is based in the heart of Silicon Valley and we're hiring. Learn more at http://www.AKASA.com.

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SOURCE AKASA

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Majority of Health Systems That Leverage Lean Principles Use Automation as Part of Process Improvement - Yahoo Finance

Do we need humans for that job? What about Automation? Those are questions a lot of businesses are asking right now.

Service sector jobs once considered safe are no longer. In Dallas, a restaurant/bakery is now using robots to deliver food and drinks to tables, and it even talks.

As crazy as it sounds, business owners are thinking about all their options in light of the pandemic.

The U.S. economy has been moving in that way since we began with automation more than a hundred years ago, University of Houston Economist Ed Hirs said. Every dollar you save on labor is something we can offset with capital. Its a trade.

Hirs also believes some workers are waiting, to see where they fit in a post-pandemic job market. Supply chain interruptions have made it difficult for some to return to their old job. The U.S. Labor Department says there are almost 11 million job openings nationwide, but lots of them remain unfilled.

Part of its a shift. Part of it is the population really coming to terms with trying to get back to work and not really being sure about how to go about doing it, he explained.

Hirs says it remains to be seen if the recent expiration of government COVID handouts will lead to more Americans looking for work.

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What About A Robot? Businesses Turning To Automation Post Pandemic | NewsRadio 740 KTRH - NewsRadio 740 KTRH

Joint alliance to augment general aviation pilot safety

Becker Avionics, a 65-year globally-renowned aviation industry supplier that works with the top 20 Aerospace OEMs, and commercial drone safety innovator,Iris Automation, have entered into a strategic partnership to increase the situational awareness of general aviation pilots and advance uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) safety. The two companies will jointly develop a non-required safety-enhancing equipment system to detect and warn pilots of nearby, potentially threatening aircraft.

The Iris Automation and Becker Avionics collision avoidance safety system will use computer vision and machine learning to see when another aircraft is approaching from outside the pilots field of view, and poses a risk to the equipped aircraft, issuing 3D audio warnings. The solution will combine Iris Automations patentedCasia detect and alert technologywith Becker Avionics communication and navigation equipment expertise for both crewed and uncrewed airborne applications.

Many aircraft are equipped with radio-based signalling technology (ADS-B) to avoid mid-air collisions. But in some airspace, traditional ADS-B signals are not available, increasing the workload on a pilot to monitor for incoming aircraft. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 1450 near mid-air collisions were reported from 2016-2020. Eighty-two percent of mid-air collisions occur from the rear, states the AOPA Air Safety Foundation (ASF). This risk is especially acute for the $48B helicopter market, with over 38,000 aircraft in service worldwide.

The Iris Automation/Becker Avionics opto-electric/audio system will monitor airspace in visual flight conditions independently, onboard the pilots aircraft, even if ADS-B or TCAS signals may be unavailable. It supplements pilots situational awareness, whether in the cockpit or remote, during instrument scans or other parts of the airspace. By providing warnings in time to take appropriate actions to avoid potential collisions, the system is designed to improve safety with minimal impact on pilot workload.

Roland Becker, Chairman of Becker Avionics

Becker Avionics has provided reliable aviation equipment for 65 years, enabling regulatory compliance and aviator safety. Partnering with an innovator like Iris Automation will allow our customers to exploit advanced technology to fly safer, especially as airspace congestion increases. Client interest in this kind of solution is very high, and our ability to service both their cockpit and remote pilot safety needs is unique in the industry.

Jon Damush, CEO of Iris Automation

This relationship is a pivotal move for Iris Automation as it defines and accelerates our work in the general aviation space. Our core mission is to improve air safety by avoiding collisions and this extension of our technology is a natural evolution. We are excited to be able to work with one of the most storied brands in the industry to deliver this important innovation.

About Becker Avionics

Becker Avionics is a renowned manufacturer in digital avionics technology, setting the standard in customer-oriented, state-of-the-art ground and airborne solutions. Beckers focus is on meeting individual requirements with the highest commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, no matter what the mission. As a privately held high-tech company for 65 years, Becker Avionics has developed, manufactured and distributed the latest communication, navigation, surveillance, digital audio, and search & rescue equipment for airborne and ground applications world-wide. Becker has proudly provided world class products for General Aviation, ATC, law enforcement, military and OEM organizations including:

Airbus, Airbus Helicopters, Bell Helicopter, BAE Systems (British Aerospace), ATR, CASA, RUAG, Xian Aircraft Corporation, HAL, Leonardo Helicopter, Pilatus Aircraft, German Armed Forces, German Border Patrol, German Federal and State Police, Austrian Army and Police, Swiss Air Force, Dutch Police, Security Civil, Irish Air Corps, Egyptian Navy, Indonesian Navy, Portuguese Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and U.S. Auxiliary Civil Air Patrol, etc. For more information visit:www.becker-avionics.com

About Iris Automation

Iris Automation is a safety avionics technology company pioneering on- and off-board perception systems and aviation policy services that enable customers to build scalable operations for crewed and uncrewed aircraft; unlocking the potential of countless industries. Iris Casia system runs either onboard the aircraft or in a ground-based configuration. We work closely with civil aviation authorities globally as they implement regulatory frameworks ensuring BVLOS is conducted safely, partnering on multiple FAA ASSURE and BEYOND UAS Integration Programs and Transport Canadas BVLOS Technology Demonstration Program.Visitwww.irisonboard.com.

Originally posted here:

Renowned Aviation Supplier Becker Avionics Partners with Iris Automation - sUAS News

General Motors siblings BrightDrop and Cruise Automation are talking about how driverless technology could fit with commercial vehicles like the electric vans BrightDrop will begin delivering to FedEx in December.

Cruise is starting on ride-share, but they have investment from Walmart, BrightDrop CEO Travis Katz told FreightWaves in an interview at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo last week in Long Beach, California.

Walmart is in the delivery business so you can imagine their ideas there, and were in the delivery business. So I think what weve really started to talk about with the Cruise guys is what does the future of delivery look like and whats the rule for autonomy?

How the two would work together is the unanswered question. But coming out of GM, scaling a business would be easier than for a smaller company working solo.

Theres a lot of problems still to be solved, Katz zaid. How do you really make this customer-centric and customer friendly? And how do you make it really seamless from the warehouse all the way to the front door?

Before anything happens with Cruise, BrightDrop has to deliver the first tranche of 500 Class 3 EV600 electric vans and an electronically driven EP1 cargo box to FedEx Express in December. The vans are being built in Ingersoll, Ontario, the former assembly plant of the Chevrolet Equinox SUV.

GM announced BrightDrop virtually during the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

Like its parent company, BrightDrop has been affected by a shortage of microchips critical to automobile and commercial vehicles. But Katz said production is still running to target. GMs supply chain expertise makes a huge difference.

I dont know if youre a new company getting off the ground and you arent buying hundreds of millions of parts how you have the leverage, Katz said. I wont say its not challenging for everyone, including GM. Its challenging, but I think were well positioned to manage our way through it.

The EV600 enters a segment with multiple big players, including Ford Motor Co.s E-Transit electric van, Amazon-backed startup battery-electric Rivian and Workhorse Group, which is delivering small numbers of its C-1000 electric cargo van.

During a panel discussion at the ACT Expo, Katz said the EV600 would save the average fleet operator $7,000 a year versus a diesel-powered van.

The amount of inbound demand were seeing for these vehicles is incredible, Katz said. It actually took everyone by surprise just how much demand there is, and [it has] caused us to rethink a little bit our manufacturing plans to make sure that we were ready and scaled to meet the demand.

But he is silent beyond two customer announcements to date the 500 EV600s to FedEx and the intent by fleet management company Merchants Fleet to take 12,600 of the battery-powered vans by 2023.

A lot of companies have got out over their skis a little bit, talking probably too publicly about things that they probably should not be talking about. Weve got super-exciting things I would love to be able to share. Were not going to share them until we can share them in a way thats really concrete.

A lot of companies have got out over their skis a little bit, talking probably too publicly about things that they probably should not be talking about, Katz said. Weve got super-exciting things I would love to be able to share. Were not going to share them until we can share them in a way thats really concrete.

Thats either the typically conservative GM approach or wisdom taken from the experience of companies like electric pickup truck startup Lordstown Motors, which is under Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission scrutiny for allegedly inflating orders.

GM has a full-size van, sold as the Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana, that serves a certain portion of the van market plumbers, electricians and other skilled trades. The EV600 complements those vehicles but borrows little from other legacy GM vehicles, save for a few components.

The [EV600] itself is designed from the ground up for delivery, he said, mentioning a low step-in height. These guys get in and out of vans 150 times a day, so their knees wear out if youre stepping high.

The EV600 uses the Ultium battery platform and borrows from the battery-electric Hummer, now sold as a GMC model after being introduced in the early 2000s as a stand-alone brand. The electric van development time broke the Hummers record for speed to market.

We were able to go even faster because were able to leverage a lot of what theyre doing, Katz said.

BrightDrop is as much a software enterprise as it is a van manufacturer.

All of our products are connected internet of things devices that allow fleet operators to have visibility, control and insights about whats happening with their fleets in real time, Katz said. You can start to have real-time chain of custody, where it is in the delivery stage, how many touches it has had and who actually touched it.

On charging, which is critical to up time for electric vehicles, BrightDrop is working with the GM Fleet organization to leverage a collaboration called Ultium 360, which includes infrastructure providers EVGo, In-Charge, Schneider Electric and Duke Energy.

The idea is that were partnering with these companies to make this transition seamless and easy. So we are going to be bringing in these partners early on in the conversations with customers, Katz said.

The EV600 is only part of what BrightDrop considers an ecosystem around first-to-last-mile delivery. Katz wont discuss the take rate for the EP1 among those interested in the van, but he said it is significant.

When you talk to companies that are doing last-mile delivery, the growth in e-commerce is breaking their model, and so they need a lot of help, he said.

We literally had our design team riding around on delivery routes with drivers to study everything: the ergonomics, where are they staging their package before they jump off, how are they getting in? I think that focus on this use case of delivery is something that Im not sure anyone else has done before.

GM to bring electric cargo van, medium-duty truck to market

GM bets on BrightDrops connected last-mile delivery ecosystem

Merchants Fleet orders 12,600 GM BrightDrop electric vans

Click for more FreightWaves articles by Alan Adler.

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GM siblings BrightDrop and Cruise Automation talking about driverless delivery - FreightWaves