More about robots and industry

TM Robotics recently authored a report investigating which nations are leading the way in the race for automated production. Statistics from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) show that the number of industrial robots used in production activities is increasing rapidly. However, three-quarters of total robot sales are currently attributed to just five countries — China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the United States, and Germany.

Asia has long remained the strongest market for robotics. Of the record-breaking 380,550 robot units sold globally in 2017, a significant percentage of these are deployed to Asian factories. In fact, the region has reported record-breaking robot sales for the past four years in a row, rising by 19% in 2017. Asia has pulled out all the stops to remain at the forefront in this area. In 2015, for instance, the Chinese government announced Made in China 2025 (MiC2015), a national initiative that aims to reboot the country’s manufacturing sector, with the objective of China becoming the world’s largest user of robots.

Similarly, Japan launched its own transformation project in 2017, called Society 5.0. This initiative aims to go beyond Germany’s 2011 Industry 4.0 initiative by considering the challenges that these new technologies will bring to society, rather than focusing solely on their use in manufacturing. 

According to the World Robot Statistics, the world’s average robot density is 74 robots per 10,000 employees. The United States sits comfortably above this, at 189 robots per 10,000 employees. In 2016, the country began to climb the robot-density ranks, and today comes in at seventh in the world, behind South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and Denmark.

This figure has been significantly boosted by the modernization of U.S. production facilities, as well as the growing demand for products made in the United States. What’s more, robot sales in the U.S. are expected to increase by at least 15% per year between now and 2020.

Europe, the world’s second-largest market for industrial robot sales, has also increased its volume of robot deployment. Purchasing 56,000 units in total, the continent reached a new peak for robot sales for the third year in a row. That said, much of this deployment was attributed to Germany, currently the fifth-largest robot market in the world. Much of Europe’s deployment of robotic technology is related to the automotive industry. It’s therefore no surprise that the greatest champions for robotics in Europe are those with a strong automotive presence — Germany, Italy, and Sweden.

Automotive manufacturers have long used six-axis robots throughout production. Looking to the future, increasing the volume of robot deployment will rely on the small- to medium-sized companies also investing in automation.

To reach this market, industrial robots must become more accessible, in relation to both cost and user experience. The results of TM Robotics’ "Global Robotics Report," which will be released in 2019, stated that simple programming was one of the most important features when choosing a SCARA, Cartesian, or six-axis model, with 79% of respondents naming this as a top-five consideration.

Easy robot programming is not only an attractive feature for new users, but also provides established users with reduced programming time. Growing demand for easily programmable robots is also evident in the rapid increase in sales of collaborative models — robots that can work without protective barriers between machine and employee.

Collaborative robots, or co-bots, currently account for 3% of the total robotics market, but this figure is expected to reach 34% by 2025. Although these machines have been marketed as easy to program, they should not be considered a complete alternative to traditional industrial robots.

While co-bots do boast some impressive responsive features, these machines generally cannot tackle the dangerous, repetitive, and heavy-duty tasks usually associated with industrial robots — and respondents to the "Global Robotics Report" agree, with 55% saying that they do not believe co-bot technology is advanced enough to deliver the performance required for manufacturing, and a further 25% saying that they are unsure of these co-bots' capabilities.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for automating a facility. While growth in the co-bot market shows that co-bots may indeed be an ideal first step toward automation, there’s more than one route to deploying robotics in an industrial facility.

Unlike the first industrial revolution, today’s manufacturing industry is fiercely competitive. Not only are nations aiming to increase the volume of robots they deploy in their facilities, but new types of robotic technologies are emerging every day to take on new tasks and operations. The IFR predicts that the industry will experience another boom in 2019, with an estimated 2.6 million robot units set to be deployed. There’s no denying that Asia is currently dominating the robotics market, but with such rapid changes happening in a relatively short period of time, there’s good opportunity for other nations to catch up.

Image credit: PopTika / Shutterstock.com

Interesting facts

Solid-state batteries have long been heralded as The Next Big Thing after lithium-ion, with companies from all quarters racing to get them into high-volume production. Dyson, BMW and car manufacturer Fisker are just a few names that have been working on the tech for the last few years, but now, reports suggest a Chinese start-up might be the first to have cracked it.

According to Chinese media, Qing Tao Energy Development Co, a startup out of the technical Tsinghua University, has deployed a solid-state battery production line in Kunshan, East China. Reports claim the line has a capacity of 100MWh per year -- which is planned to increase to 700MWh by 2020 -- and that the company has achieved an energy density of more than 400Wh/kg, compared to new generation lithium-ion batteries that boast a capacity of around 250-300Wh/kg.

Details beyond this are sparse. The headline news here, if accurate, would be that the company has managed to put solid-state batteries into high volume production, but it's not clear how Qing Tao Energy Development has achieved this, nor what price points are involved. Furthermore, while a capacity of 100MWh is not to be sneezed at, it still only equates to fewer than 2,000 long-range EVs per year. Nonetheless, the news demonstrates that progress is happening in the solid-state battery arena. We might not feasibly yet be at high volume production, but we're on our way.

Via: Electrek

Your data security

This is a nice article and is very serious:

In the age of digital technology, the biggest asset any company has is its data. But despite hearing that fact repeated over and over, organizations often haven’t a clue what their data is worth. That’s no surprise, considering how difficult it is to measure the value of enterprise data without generally accepted accounting principles.

However, knowing the value of your data is extremely important for determining your cybersecurity measures. Insurance policy estimates also rely on value, so operating in a vacuum where we know only that data is “valuable” can be problematic. How can you calculate how much your company’s data is worth?  

Finding the True Value of Your Data  

There are actually several ways to determine the value of your data in practical terms. For example, you can estimate the costs of replacing all the data that you have; you could try measuring how much data contributes to your organization’s revenue; or you could figure the income made by selling or renting your data if you were to turn it into Data-as-a-Service. However, calculating data value in these ways can be complex if your organization lacks deep analytic capabilities. 

Figuring Data Value by the Costs of a Breach  

One valid and intelligent way to measure the worth of data is by examining the costs of a data breach. According to the Ponemon 2018 Cost of a Data Breach report, the average loss to the company caused by an attack is $148 per compromised record. 

That means for breaches in which more than 50,000 records are compromised, damages could reach $6.9 million. Even that is nowhere near the scale of a truly massive, headline-grabbing  breach: one million compromised records could cost a company up to $39 million!

Securing Data and Its Value to the Company 

The root cause of all this high risk and potentially massive damage is the phishing attack. When you place a quantifiable value on the data that your organization collects and processes, it’s easy to see why cybersecurity must become a top priority. 

Once a phishing attack succeeds in installing malware on your system, your data is threatened by ransomware, theft of vital banking information and corporate credentials, and other crimes.  

This is why Gartner names anti-phishing defense as essential to an overall protection architecture. 

Data breaches are common occurrences, especially when hackers target humans as the weakest link in any cybersecurity system. Gartner notes Verizon’s statistic that phishing and pretexting encompass 98 percent of social incidents and 93 percent of breaches.

Through a phishing attack, a criminal needs for you to make only one miscalculation and click on a malicious link to enable breach of your organization and considerable financial damage. Because of this vulnerability, anti-phishing protection that preempts attacks before they become a threat should be the first course of action and best practice for protecting your organization—far more reliable than trying to train employees.  

Area 1 Security offers the technology-based anti-phishing protection that Gartner recommends as a necessary element of an overall security infrastructure. A dedicated anti-phishing strategy can detect threats in advance and disable them before they reach the inbox. Don’t let a data breach force you to put a costly price tag on your organization’s data—protect that data from phishing and retain its value intact.

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Article by Kim Del Fierro, VP of Marketing for Area 1 Security.

More to coem soon

Joe Rossini

The day of the robot!!!

Here is an interesting yet frighting article about robots and construction!

The HRP-5P is a humanoid robot from Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute that can perform common construction tasks including – as we see above – install drywall.

While HRP-5P – maybe we can call it Herb? – uses environmental measurement, object detection, and motion planning to perform various tasks. In this video we see it use small hooks to grab the wallboard and slide it off onto the floor. Then, with a bit of maneuvering, it’s able to place the board against the joists and drill them in place.

“By utilizing HRP-5P as a development platform of industry-academia collaboration, it is expected that research and development for practical use of humanoid robots in building construction sites and assembly of large structures such as aircraft and ships will be accelerated,” write the creators.

The researchers see the robot as a replacement for an aging population and a declining birthrate. “It is expected that many industries such as the construction industry will fall into serious manual shortages in the future, and it is urgent to solve this problem by robot technology,” the write. “Also, at work sites assembling very large structures such as building sites and assembling of aircraft/ships, workers are carrying out dangerous heavy work, and it is desired to replace these tasks with robot technology. However, at the assembly site of these large structures, it is difficult to develop a work environment tailored to the robot, and the introduction of robots has not progressed.”

Considering there are 6 million contractors in the US alone, robots like this one could be a boon or a curse. What happens when we can easily replace humans in shipping, logistics, and construction? Let’s just hope Herb here needs a supervisor.

More to come!

Joe

Automation on all levels of life is growing

Automation, it over the centuries has been a dirty word for many. Way back the horse so necessary to go from one place to another or to help farm the land gave way grudgingly to the car. The locomotive gave way to the airplane. The old fashion printing system gave way to the big presses. The mail is or has given way to the Internet. The list goes on and on. Today we see the web being used more and more and we are seeing the rise of driverless cars. Hamburgers are being made automatically and kiosks allow you to buy a burger without a person.  Ok, I have made the point and that is life as we know it is changing. Things and work that used to require people are quickly shrinking. The big key is retraining to be able to program or guide those robots and that, for now, is the job to have.

More to come soon.

Joe

Brick and mortar fight back!

Aldi is taking its online delivery strategy national.

• RELATED

  
  Aldi expanding in the Garden State

Through its partnership with Instacart, the German supermarket company is bringing its online grocery delivery service to all stores in the United States. The national rollout covers 75 major markets, including San Diego, New York City, Miami, Raleigh and Minneapolis. By Thanksgiving, the service will be available across 5,000 new ZIP codes in 35 states.

Shoppers can participate by visiting Instacart.com or downloading the Instacart app. At checkout, customers can choose a delivery window that works best with their schedule, anywhere from an hour or up to a week later.

The German discount grocer began piloting the service in Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles in August 2017. By March, the company expanded the program to the Midwest.

“Aldi is a pioneer and a leader in creating a shopping experience that works with people’s busy lives,” said Jason Hart, CEO of Aldi U.S. “Our partnership with Instacart and the expansion of our e-commerce options are more ways we are meeting the growing needs of today’s shopper…”

The delivery program coincides with Aldi’s aggressive store expansionacross the U.S. Aldi is in investing more than $5 billion to remodel and expand its store count to 2,500 by the end of 2022. The company, which already operates more than 1,800 stores across the country, said it is more than halfway through its remodel investment.

From China Store Age magazine

A great customer

Describe a recent project you are fond of. How long did it take?

We are very proud of the website and Internet presence we created for Fifth Avenue Internet Garage in Clay Center, Kansas. We approached the owner, Randy Rundle via a cold call and introduced ourselves as web marketing specialists. Randy informed us that he had contracted with other specialists to build him a web page, but they could not create the satisfactory web presence that he was looking for. Randy has a customer base that is not web savvy and he wanted something that was user-friendly and easy to navigate and allowed him the one-on-one customer support that he has used for years. Randy wanted simplicity: He wanted his customers to understand what he offered and also new products he adds several times a year

 

Our programmers created his website, and you will see it is not Responsive Design, but that is by his desire because he wanted a site that would render on most browsers available at the time, including ones that are older since many of his customers do not have new PCs or other devices. Randy invented 6 volt and 12-volt alternators for antique vehicles. An area of pride for Randy is his knowledge of antique cars and their internal workings and he displays that with the release of “The Alternator gazette” a PDF document published for antique vehicle enthusiasts.

 

The website was a huge success. Randy’s website is visited by people from all over the world! After the website success, he decided he wanted to start blogging as a way to further his reputation and introduce new products. We created his first blog, and he has published 72 blog entries. The next year he added another blog to market antique parts and other memorabilia he has collected over the years.

 

As an SEO specialist, I often tell my customers to participate in marketing and evaluation of their website; the most successful websites are where the customer and Rossini.com are a team. Think of a  website as a living document, reflecting you and your company. I am proud to report that this small company has, on a consistent basis, thousands of visitations per week, and is my top producer of visitations beating out several multi million-dollar companies with much bigger websites, and that is because he cares and participates in the process. Besides, his website is a fun site! Be sure and visit his website at: http://fifthaveinternetgarage.com/index.php, his Garage Tech blog: https://fifthaveinternetgarage.blogspot.com/, and Mr. Haney’s Specials: http://mrhaneyspecials.blogspot.com/.

 

 

Retail check out is changing fast!

C-store chain Ricker's partners with Skip for mobile checkout                                   

Dive Brief:

• Ricker's, an Indiana-based oil company that also operates 58 convenience stores in the same state, is working with Skip, a provider of a mobile checkout app, to develop what the companies describe as a "hybrid" of mobile payment and Amazon Go-like shopper experience in Ricker's locations, according to a press release.
• Skip said in the press release that its technology reduces the length of in-store checkout from an average of 60 seconds to an instant, customer-controlled pay-and-go action controlled by the customer. The company also claims the system lowers transaction fees for its retailer partners through a partnership with payments processor Zipline.
• The companies are working on optimizing the mobile checkout experience, including integrations with Zipline and Ricker's Kickback Rewards loyalty program, and are planning to make it available across all Ricker's locations by the end of next month.

The robots are coming!!!!!!! To your tummy!

I had to post this, it came from the Thomas Register but wow what an article:

We’ve all come through on the other side of the pizza delivery from hell and lived to tell the tale. Waiting 90 minutes for an expensive slice only to scrape the tepid cheese off the top of the box was enough to make some California entrepreneurs seek out a new approach to the entire process. Was there a way to improve the quality and speed of a typical pizza delivery, without adding costs to the already mounting fees for food, tax, delivery, and tip?

Meet Zume Pizza, a startup launched in 2015 by two friends who brought artificial intelligence and robotics to the pizza biz. Business Insider describes Zume as looking more like a manufacturing plant than a pizza joint. The company has no front-of-house – it’s all delivery – and the bulk of the pizza-making responsibility has been delegated to robots.

Speed is a huge factor in the shift. Zume’s kitchen can reportedly drop 370 pizzas in an hour and cut delivery times to anywhere from five to 20 minutes.

Automation partner ABB Robotics helped design the doughbot, which presses out a ball of dough in nine seconds before sending it down a conveyor line to be slathered in sauce. After the sauce is spread, a human worker takes care of the application of toppings and cheese, a part of the process that doesn’t lend itself well to automation just yet due to the differing sizes and weights of what’s being applied.

But once topped, a robot named Vincenzo slips the pizza in an oven, and after it bakes to bubbly perfection, workers slide it into Zume’s proprietary self-cleaning pizza slicer.

The company says its 14-inch pizzas are all within the $10 and $20 range, which includes delivery. They also stress that Zume is a no-tipping business and that they pay their workers fair wages – including health insurance – so you don’t have to.

But this next part is my favorite: Zume’s delivery vehicle is a pizza-emblazoned RV, and it’s stocked inside with 56 ovens. If you live further than 12 minutes from their operations, Zume packs your pizza partially cooked into one of these ovens, so it finishes baking on the way.

And back to the claim of five-minute deliveries – well this is where the artificial intelligence comes in. Zume says a few years of customer data was enough for it to be able to predict, in large part, what kinds of pizzas will be consumed where. Because we’re creatures of habit, I guess. During certain peak hours, it sends its delivery trucks stocked with these standard issue pies, and as soon as you press “submit” on your online order, Zume is ready for you with a piping hot pizza.

Sound too good to be true? Well, for most of America it is. Zume currently reaches just a small region near its Silicon Valley headquarters. But that could change, as its recently been reported that SoftBank is in talks to invest $750 million into the pizza company and Zume says they are working their hardest to expand.

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Remember to always put in new content

Content...content...content it is so important. Keep changing, keep updating and always try to advise potential customers how your service or product can help them. Do you have an edge over your competition? Tell the world what it is now because sure enough it will be gone in the blink of an eye. Do you have a product release, tell the world and show your pride about it. Your words will help sell your product and your company.

I am proud of our SEO services and in our ability to bring leads to our customers. The more leads I can bring the better their sales and of course the easier it is for them to write that check to me. I am also very proud of our ability to create websites. We can and have made companies shine and that bring in people to use their service.

Remember to tell people what makes you different and better than others. Why should a company buy from you? Is it your experience? Is it your products? Is it you? Push you and you can not help but succeed.

More to come soon.

Joe

Long tail keywords

A bit about keywords:

Long-tail keywords are generally more effective because they: • Are more specific and better at pre-qualifying traffic • Align more with the end of the purchasing funnel, so they convert at a higher rate • Are less competitive and therefore cost less on a per-click basis This advertiser is using mostly long-tail keywords — over 80% of the keywords include three words or more, and just 1% are one-word terms. This is likely a big part of why the average CTR and Quality Score are so high.

More to come soon.

SEO and keywords are they important?

You now have all started to hear about it and that is SEO? What is SEO? Well, Wikipedias definition of SEO is:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results—often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a website appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users; these visitors can then be converted into customers. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. SEO differs from local search engine optimization in that the latter is focused on optimizing a business' online presence so that its web pages will be displayed by search engines when a user enters a local search for its products or services. The former instead is more focused on national or international searches.

When you do a search what do you do? Well if you are like me and millions of others you go to Google or Bing and you type in a keyword or phrase or company you might be looking for. I just Googled an HVAC company near me to come out and look at my hot water heater and sure enough up came the results I needed. let me be more specific, I did not type in HVAC company I typed in HVAC company in Miami County Kansas. If I had just typed in HVAC company I would have gotten ten billion results none of which I wanted. By being more specific I got the result I wanted right away! The bottom line is one of the most important areas of SEO is the proper use of long tail keywords in your internals of your website that the search engines will find. Google says: Around 20–25% of searches are very specific long tail keywords entered into Google. So think of your product or your service and think of what a potential customer might type in to find that product or service in Google or Bing. Be specific and you will get more of the right potential customers to find you.

So when I look at a potential customer, I look at their website and I look inside to see those keywords and I analyze them to see if they are what people are looking for. The question I am almost always asked is how do I see my internal code and I say ask your web person and have them tell you what they put in there.

Well, this is part one of SEO and how it can help you. More to come soon. If you have any questions, feel free to call me at 913-244-6132 or e-mail me at jrossini@rossini.com.

More to come soon!


Joe Rossini

New customer

Rossini Management Systems, Inc. is proud to announce the addition of a new SEO customer http://www.lamprechtusa.com. a leading freight forwarding company here in the USA.

Firmly booked freight compartment capacities make even short-notice transport possible and that to excellent conditions.

Perishables, medical technology, precision machinery or spare parts - these are products that need to get to their worldwide destinations in the fastest possible way. American Lamprecht Transport Inc. knows the ways and means and offers you a fully comprehensive service for air freight, from door to door.

For either efficiency or your individual needs, we select the ideal solution for you – because airline, routing and service are critical for the timely delivery of your goods.

For project cargo and special transports such as hand carrier, combined transport ocean freight/air freight, charter, express products, hazardous goods, perishables and cross trade deliveries, our experienced and competent staff are constantly at your side with help and advice.

The speediest means of transport for your goods: air freight

About Google adwords

This comes right from Google about using the right keywords  when using your AdWords campaigns:

Keywords are words or phrases you choose when you set up your AdWords campaign. These are terms you think your potential customers are likely to use when searching for products or services like yours.

By matching your keywords with the ads you create, you make it possible for your ad to show when someone searches for similar terms or visits a website with related content.

For example, if you deliver fresh flowers, you could use fresh flower delivery as one keyword paired with an ad promoting fresh flower delivery. When someone searches Google using the phrase fresh flower delivery or a similar term, your ad might appear above or below Google search results, or on other websites related to fresh flower delivery.

Did you know that you can:

reach people who have visited your website or used your app. Previous visitors or users can see your ads as they browse websites that are part of the Google Display Network, or as they search for terms related to your products or services on Google.

Touch base with me if you have an interest in getting more leads!

Talk more soon.

Joe

Free webinar presented by WERC and Siggins

A free WERC webinar presented by Siggins on Wednesday, June 20, 2018

2:00 PM ET / 1:00 PM CT / 11:00 AM PT

The webinar will talk about Better Solutions for the New World of Technology-Driven Distribution. Presented by Steve Wilson, Systems Engineer, Analyst and Warehouse Design Consultant, Siggins. ...

See More

REGISTRATIONHEADQUARTERS.COM

Event :: June 2018: Better Solutions :: Home Page

Cyber security

The Time for Cybersecurity is Now.

Cybersecurity threats are more prevalent than ever. Has your organization taken the necessary steps to ensure it is protected from the next malware or ransomware attack? Emerson has put together a comprehensive Cybersecurity Guidebook for Process Control aimed at providing practical solutions to help you assess and reduce your organization’s risk level.   Adopt a Risk-based Approach to Cybersecurity A risk-based approach to cybersecurity can help you make strategic decisions based on the likelihood and impact of each vulnerability.     Tighten System Access Building a culture of security by creating and enforcing security best practices will help your employees realize they are a crucial part of keeping your operations safe and secure.     Go Beyond Perimeter Protection Hackers count on organizations forgetting the backdoors they’ve left open. Using the tools at your disposal, you can shut those doors and lock them tight.  Attack after attack be prepared!