Spanish SOHOs and SMEs have faced in recent years to a very complex macroeconomic environment. Indeed, it might be more precise saying that they are still facing this situation. The fall in the domestic consumption, along with financial constraints, has caused a contraction of the main economic indicators in most productive sectors of our economy.
Despite this unfavorable scenario, we happily can see that the adoption of ICT –Information and Communications Technologies – tools is clearly consolidated in the daily procedures of management and control. ICT tools introduction is considered absolutely necessary for survival in the market. IC Technology keeps being one of the best allies of entrepreneurs in their attempt to improve the competitiveness of their business, allowing the opening of new markets and the optimization of the internal management processes.
Regarding their information systems, one of the biggest challenges that these companies may face, is the adoption of an advanced management system capable to accurately identify the current and future situation of their business. That is, a system that centralizes all the company data and numbers.
However, unfortunately, much more often than expected, we can found SMEs who have suffered serious problems in the process of implementing such systems. If we wanted to enumerate the different possible causes for the occurrence of these problems, every entrepreneur, worker or implementation technician that have faced a situation like this, could probably provide two or more reasons based on their particular suffering experience. What we can state is that, in too many occasions, projects fail because their excessive implementation required time. Companies must adapt to the new market trends while they are implementing already obsolete tools associated to their production processes.
However, we must not understand these problems as an obstacle to the adoption of such systems within our companies. We simply must consider it as a warning of the deserved importance of the implementation processes within the company. It is crucial to accept and understand that, every worker in the company must be an active element in the implementation process, and each worker role is equally relevant, with completely independence on their position within the organization. In order to success in the implementing project, there are two equally important choices to make: system and people. The final selection of the system, in order to choose the most suitable one for the company profile and the required objectives. The company personnel, involved in the data collection must be aware of the importance of doing it rigorously in time and place.
Obviously, all the responsibility for the success or failure must not be attributed only to the company staff. The role developed by the technician staff of the outsourced implementing company will be also essential. Implementing tasks will face predicted and also unexpected problems. The external technicians must be able to early detect them and choose the most suitable solution for each situation.
Regarding this last issue, in CARTIF, we have developed our own advanced management ICT system specifically oriented for the SMEs: SAGIT. It was initially though and designed targeting the agrofood industrial companies and their traceability requirements. First developments and implementing were focus on the vegetables and winery sectors. After that, additional functionalities were added in order to be implemented in diverse sectors like fresh and cured meat, flour mills, daily-products, industrial bakery, snacks, etc. Over time the system has evolved into a multi-sector solution capable of managingany company in any sector. In addition, we managed to create, build and maintain a work team with extensive experience in adapting and implementing the same solutions in many different processes and situations.
Beyond painting your factory or your products in green color
In our previous post, we mentioned two corporate sustainability initiatives (one from IKEA and another from Google). It is true that these two companies are somehow unique cases, without easy extrapolation to other industrial sectors related with the “traditional manufacturing”. However, these two keep being good examples of the current emerging trends regarding environmental concerns.
In an increasingly globalized and competitive world, the concerns of citizens about environmental issues are not always considered with the required priority by lawmakers.
Luckily, consumers begin to ask companies a greater commitment to the environment.
More consumers reject the most polluting products, and even, some of them are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly goods and services. In this new scenario, companies are worrying for showing to the community that they are as “green” as possible. However it does not always correspond to reality, and the so called “greenwashing” occurs.
Wikipedia defines greenwashing as a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that an organization’s products, aims or policies are environmentally friendly.
Evidence that an organization is greenwashing often comes from pointing out the spending differences: when significantly more money or time has been spent advertising being “green”, than is actually spent on environmentally sound practices.
Ok, so this is another type of misleading advertising, why this type represents a bigger problem?
Seems like anything and everything has “gone green” these days. Airlines, car companies, retailers, restaurants… Thankfully, more often than not, that’s a good thing. It’s only bad if it’s greenwashing — that’s bad for the environment, consumers, and, ultimately, for the very businesses doing the greenwashing.
Environment: At its very worst, greenwashing is bad for the environment because it can encourage masses of consumers to do the opposite of what’s good for the environment. At its most benign, greenwashing makes claims that are neither good nor bad for the environment — it’s just making green claims to sell more stuff.
Consumers: Nobody likes to be taken advantage of, especially when it comes to money. The last thing consumers want to do is to spend extra money on a product or service they believe is doing right for the environment, but in reality is not — or not as much as the ad might lead them to believe.
Businesses: Smart businesses are finding out that doing right for the environment actually does increase profitability in many cases. With so many easy ways for businesses to reduce their environmental impact or improve their products and processes, it’s just sad when they don’t. It’s even worse when they don’t make changes and claim to be a green company. Once properly informed and trained, consumers become able to distinguish honest companies from cheater ones. Sooner or later, the practice of greenwashing will explode in their hands, therefore, destroying the reputation of the company and consequently also their sales.
Ok, problem understood, what can we do to eradicate this practice?
In 2008, the Oregon University launched the GREENWASHING INDEX, where everyone who wishes can send and evaluate ads claiming friendly environmental properties. Users then, evaluate –with the corresponding justification- the truthfulness of the ads on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means Authentic and 5 means Bogus.
In the same year, the British association Carbon Trust, launched its certification program Carbon Trust Standard, that includes protocols for measuring the real reductions of the companies’ environmental impact and therefore prevents greenwashing practices.
In Spain, currently there are not similar initiatives. Some companies are voluntarily making Environmental Product Declarations, (EPD) of their goods and services based on the ISO 14025 standard. This regulation requires certified methodologies and the publication of the obtained results and therefore making a real environmental transparency exercise. Unfortunately, the number of products or services covered by this certification is merely a token.
In Spain, as citizens-consumers and regarding our options to change the world, it seems we are not yet aware than our wallets are more powerful than our votes.
Other possible example or indicator of this awareness difference is the direct comparison of the effect that the “Dieselgate” has produced on the sales of Volkswagen vehicles in Spain and the United Kingdom.
And you, do you know any greenwashing case? How much more would you accept to pay for a more environmentally friendly product or service?
The biggest obstacles are not the technology barriers but the psychological and organizational barriers.
In the previous post, we explained the three steps (Reduce, Recover and Replace) through which a factory can reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases associated with its energy consumption.
Let’s suppose that Peter is a newly hired young engineer in a factory as Energy Responsible to reduce factory emissions and improve their corporate image, following the proposed steps of the REEMAIN project.
Peter, our new energy manager, logically begins with the first step: reduce, which is the easiest one be carried out, at least with respect to disconnecting the machinesthat are not being used. These gestures allow the factory to save energy and money at the same time. They will not usually cause tensions within the organizational structure of a factory. Using a cyclist simile, “this road is flat and with the tailwind”.
However, the next step sooner or later will analyze the different energy settings of the production systems in search of an energy settings alternative that reduces energy consumption and here, returning to cyclist similes, is where “the road becomes an uphill road”.
Wage incentives and bonuses for production managers are usually based mainly in the fulfillment of the planned production. This fact generates an internal pressure from up to bottom within the organization of the factory so that nothing impedes the achievement of the actual production figures. Then, once the production figures are assured, the next parameter to optimize, in terms of incentives and bonuses, is the economic cost of this production. But usually this cost, will be studied and evaluated in an aggregated or global way.
For example, casting thermal processes, usually specify a possible range of working temperatures. The minimum working temperature is that which ensures that the molten metal will not solidify prematurely under nominal operating conditions. The maximum temperature is fixed by the characteristics of the machinery itself and the product. Very occasionally, production stops due to incidentals, the molten metal is cooled slightly and this issue causes the so called “cold shut” defects, with the consequent rejection of the pieces produced, and therefore, the failure to achieve the production targets. How this problem is avoided in most cases? Opting for the easiest solution, this is, to raise the temperature of the molten metalpermanently to have bigger margins against eventual stops, whether or not they finally occur.
Another practical example is the operation of the compressed air systems of the factories. Again, to avoid problems of lack of supply and the corresponding “reprimand”, maintenance chiefs set the power of the compressors to full power permanently whether or not the factory is working under full production regime.
The above examples are intended to show the fact that sometimes the energy settings of the processes are oversized with the consequent increase in energy consumption. This is because, the factory workers and managers involved in the production and maintenance perceive that do not oversizing might harm other indicators such as compliance with production planning and the total planned cost. As long as these two key performance indicators or KPIs are exclusively the only or main criteria for evaluating the performance of production workers and maintenance, there will always be internal resistance to the implementation of the changes necessary to achieve a cleaner production.
In the past, other secondary indicators, not considered important as job safety or respect for labor rights, gained importance and also became key indicators when assessing the performance of a factory. There are already companies like Google (Google Green Initiative) or IKEA (People and Planet Positive initiative) that have undertaken internal restructuring with the sole aim to reduce associated emissions even at the cost of worsening any of the economic KPIs.
In the next post, we will talk about practical examples of green manufacturing.
There is a growing concern caused by the possible effects Artificial Intelligence (AI) could have on everyday working life. Recently in the Davos Forum they have dealt with this issue, but two years ago The Economist published an article about the potential job lost that will be caused by this technology.
Films have made Artificial Intelligence familiar to everybody. From Colossus: The Forbid Project, where a super-computer managed to dominate the entire world and stole the girlfriend to its designer; to Ex Machina, where a heartless machine managed to fulfil its ambitions with no moral hesitation. Almost in all cases, it has been portrayed in a dystopian way. However, the AI we will see soon will not look like an android, as Ava in Ex Machina, but it will resemble HAL 9000, the moral disoriented computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think the first AI materialisation we will see is the Cognitive Computation, named by IBM as Watson.
Watson is a machine able to answer questions posed in natural language capable of processing huge amounts of information to give the correct answer. It became known to general public in 2008, when it defeated two human opponents in Jeopardy!, a television contest featuring a quiz competition.
One of the first commercial Watson uses is to support lung cancer treatment by suggesting the best drug combination for every patient. Another application soon available will be to answer call phones in a call centre. Genesys, a company that develops and sells systems for that application, wants to include Watson in its portfolio. Watson will answer the phone, have a conversation with the user and refer him to a human operator if needed. The experience will be quite similar to the current one, but a machine will do a job that requires some intellectual abilities.
Aptitudes like the ones featured by Watson fear analysts there will be a job lostthere where intellectual and routine tasks are done, even if qualification is needed as in accounting, layer assistants, technical writers or drivers. This is similar to fears arisen when the artificial force appeared: machines whose power enabled them to do the same work than a dozen people while they were driven by only one.
Technology has improved artificial force. While at the beginning it was powered by steam pressure, today it is enabled by automation and robotics. Artificial force ousted many workers and make some professions disappear but, at the same time, new jobs requiring higher qualification emerged. Workers had to do a transition from muscle to brain.
On the advent of this new Artificial Intelligence technology, able to carry out intellectual, repetitive tasks, how will be the new transition workers will have to do? It will have to aim at those tasks machines by the moment cannot do: creative and emotional jobs. However, the transition period could be not easy. Required formation could not be afforded by everyone, or to hire a machine could be cheaper than to hire a person. AI cost will be determinant and, considering only Watson hardware cost around three million dollars, it seems not every company will be able to access it.
In any case, we will have to face the old question: to let others to develop the technology and became mere users, or to be the scientific, technological or commercial developers of this new industrial revolution. A Hamlet like decision.
Robotics, mainly service robotics, has long been the subject of science fiction, with protocol droids designed to serve human beings like C-3PO from “Star Wars”, military robots like Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit”, robot cleaners like Wall-E, or maids like Rosie from “The Jetsons”. The service robotics is finally stepping out of science fiction and into service, in our homes for personal use like vacuum robots led by iRobot “Roomba”. And for professional use on multitude of application areas such as cleaning robot for public places, delivery robot in offices or hospitals, rehabilitation robot and surgery robot in hospitals, assistant robot.
What is the difference between service robots and industrial robots? The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) defines service robotics as “a robot that performs useful tasks for humans or equipment excluding industrial automation application”. While in general, industrial robots refer as robot arms used in manufacturing and service robots tend to be smaller and mobile, the definition has been dependent on the end application of the robot. Furthermore, contrary to their industrial counterparts, service robots do not have to be fully automatic or autonomous. In many cases these machines may even assist a human user or be tele-operated.
Market Data Since 2010, IFR has split their report into two sections, one for industrial robotics and one for service robotics. Until now, industrial robotics has been the dominant sector for robots, particularly in the automotive industry and consumer electronics. The industrial robotics sector is worth more than 29 billion euros in sales, software and service, even though there are only 1.5 million industrial robots in the world (compared to more than 10 million Roombas)! There has been steady growth in industrial robotics for the last five years and this trend shows no signs of slowing.
The IFR has tracked overall annual growth at around 11.5% so far, and projects more than 20% annual growth to come in the service robotics industry. But some niche areas have already demonstrated growth of between 150% (mobile platforms) and 650% (assistive technology) in the last year. The primary market areas for service robots so far have been in defence, field (agriculture and inspection), logistics and health/medical applications.
One of the new categories to emerge in the last year is the humanoid helper, kiosk robot or retail assistant.
Leading Countries The largest industrial robot manufacturing country is Japan with giants such as Fanuc, Yaskawa – Motoman, Kawasaki, OTC Daihen and others. Europe also has important players, mainly with ABB, Kuka and Universal Robots. In the US, there is Adept and others that are not as dominant in the market.
With respect to service robotics, the situation is the opposite, with the US clearly leading the way. The US approach is not to build humanoid robots but rather robots dedicated to one application. Robotic industry clusters have formed around MIT, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities of which many start-ups have formed from these institutions. In fact, IFR analyses also reveal that of all the enterprises engaged in the service robot market 15 percent are start-ups.
Europe’s Position in Robotics According to SPARC (partnership for robotics in Europe), Europe starts from a strong position in robotics, having a 32% of current world markets. Industrial robotics has around one third of the world market, while in the smaller professional service robot market European manufacturers produce 63% of the non-military robots. The European position in the domestic and service robot market represents a market share of 14% and, due to its current size, this is also a much smaller area of economic activity in Europe than the other two areas.
The European Commission submits Robotics in Europe is a rapidly developing field, with a high potential for supporting growth, creating jobs and solving societal challenges. Service robotics is also bringing unique solutions to key societal challenges from health and ageing society to environmental issues. The goal is to actively shape future developments in this area and enable our businesses and citizens to capture the resulting benefits.
CARTIF and Service Robotics CARTIFhas broad experience in the development of applied research projects in service robotics developing several different mobile robots with different degrees of autonomy. Some of these robots include teleoperated platform for pipe inspection, water reservoir cleaning and maintenance to more complex autonomous robots such as a museum tour guide, a robotic bellboy, a mechatronic head with realistic appearance and an all-terrain robot for assisting emergency squads on different situations.
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution Fourth, some predict a dark future for the worker in a factory where robots and smart manufacturing machines will replace a man who will be limited to just supervise the operation of the factory of the future.
At present the small scale transformations or trends that will define this Factory of the future are already happening. These technological developments and market trends will define its appearance and operation.
The following table lists some of these trends and the expected positive or negative impact for the role (or lack of it) of the worker of the future.
The negative impact of some of these trends is mainly due to the high levels of automation that are needed to achieve the objectives.
What can we do to adapt to these changes and prevent this revolution run over us? The natural response is to worry and choose conservative strategies to stop this revolution at all cost. There has always been a fear of job loss of with any technological breakthrough. For example, with the invention of the printing the scribes nearly disappeared and the invention of the personal computer put in the hands of anyone the desktop publishing. In other cases, with technological breakthroughs new jobs appeared such as those associated with commercial aviation.
During the different industrial revolutions, the role of the worker has been rather passive in terms of how he assimilated and influenced the transformation of their work. With the First Industrial Revolution, artisan work (manual and customized) became a work driven by coal-based energy and steam. With the Second revolution, the work was divided into simple and repetitive operations that allowed the mass production of identical products. With the Third and subsequent digitization of manufacturing (computers, PLC, CAD / CAM …), the obsession with quality and the elimination or reduction of defects introduced new organizational concepts such as lean manufacturing or TPM that tried to reinforcethe active role of the worker as responsible for the product and not just a gear in a complicated clockwork. However, at present, with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the progresses in information technologies and the globalization allow us to attend these changes in a more reactive way.
Then, what will be the evolution of the work in the factory of the future? In many aspects, the worker’s role has not changed much since Adam Smith proposed that, as long as the work is divided into operations and paid properly, the matter is settled. However, statistics do not confirm Smith’s premise.
So, what is the recipe to create more productive and healthy environments? It seems that team managers have a large share of responsibility in this regard: recognize the good job, show that their contributions are valuable, provide adequate tools, listen them and include them in problem-solving. In short: to create a trusty environment for open discussion. Simple, isn’t it?
Not so much, one can not fall in the trap and patronize the worker. There is also needed a personal commitment and a change of attitude. Even in monotonous works are examples of motivated and committed employees. In these cases there is a common denominator: people who are not content just doing the tasks as specified in their job description. Hospital cleaning staff that interact and give support to the relatives of the patient, hairdressers that listen to the client or workers who strive to be more efficient and look for improvements that have the effect of reducing the environmental impact of its activities. Increased autonomy and decision-making capacity result in an increased worker satisfaction. So, how to increase the autonomy in a production line? Precisely technological breaktroughs are the answer to this challenge.
Improvements in automation, adding more robots to perform supporting tasks (internal logistics), collaborative robotics which share space securely with workers and data analytics systems that facilitate more effective decision-making, can be seen as threats to the survival of the role of the worker or as opportunities so this role evolve towards a more active position in the revolution to come.
During a recent meeting I participated, where the vision and priorities of the factory of the future was analyzed, various international experts concluded that the role of workers must evolve from a skills focused in the machinery they use (which will be more and more autonomous and intelligent) to become experts in the manufacturing process in which they are working.
How to protect jobs into the factory of the future? One of the recipes will be to provide the workers tools that result in their increased autonomy and decision making so they can perform their job in a highly flexible environment achieving an adeqaute job satisfaction.
Who knows, maybe in the future, each worker could take to work his own robot as a tool. Thus, the workers with the best “trained” or programmed assistant-robot will the ones with an ensured job.
