If you think the appetite for smart buildings is limited, you might want to reconsider your position. Thanks to a rapidly growing urban population and increased environmental regulation, operational efficiency is getting more attention. The Internet of Things (IoT) and other advances in technology are key enablers of this efficiency. Gartner research shows IoT can help reduce the cost of energy, spatial management and building maintenance by up to 30 percent. Therefore, smart buildings provide a path to a prosperous future.

A smart building uses automated operations, such as IoT, to control its processes. This impacts design and construction, energy usage and how employees engage with the space according to Schneider Electric. Systems are integrated, and data are analyzed to cut energy waste and operating costs — and ultimately boost human and business capital. To do this, the power of new technology including mobile, cloud-based systems, artificial intelligence, self-monitoring and collaborative platforms is harnessed to make radical improvements in the performance of the building.

Smart Building Value

McKinsey, which has analyzed the market opportunity for IoT in many different industries, predicts there will be between $70 billion and $150 billion of value creation by 2025 within offices due to IoT. Key areas of savings include a 25 percent reduction in maintenance costs and a 50 percent reduction in unplanned outages. Smart buildings will also increase revenue opportunities and enable the delivery of new business models.

Given the inherent issues associated with more traditional buildings — adhering to new regulations, inefficient system costs and implications of investment reputation — the value of using cutting-edge technology in buildings is obvious. And lucrative. Additional research by McKinsey revealed the IoT economic impact on buildings could reach $6.3 trillion by 2025.

Advances in IoT mean that the digitization of buildings is a priority for many companies whose operations are increasingly autonomous. Aside from the reduction in manpower and costs required to control these processes, integrated connectivity across the workplace allows the building to work smart and react to the needs of its occupants, inside and outside working hours. An example of this is the automated adjustment of room lighting and temperature based on the number of occupants. Something this simple can substantially reduce energy waste for a business.

Increased Occupant Expectations

More occupants expect their offices to have modern, easy-to-use technology. In research published by Dell and Intel, workers are not only ready for businesses to implement the latest technology to make their offices smarter, they expect it to happen within the next five years. Specifically, 44 percent of employees worldwide feel that their workspace isn’t smart enough, and more than half expect to be working in a smart office within the next five years.

This expectation is highest among the younger workforce, with 69 percent expecting to be in a smart office within the next five years. The consequences for not meeting these expectations is also greater for the millennial workforce. Forty-two percent said they would quit a job with substandard technology and 82 percent said workplace technology influences what role they would take.

Furthermore, most workers place an emphasis on functional benefits with 63 percent of millennials and 55 percent of older workers (over 35 years old) indicating they would rather have high-tech perks, such as augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) and IoT than low-tech perks like ping pong and free food. The modern workforce is also demanding smarter environments such as apps that guide employees to open workstations and meeting rooms, windows that tint in response to outside conditions, and coffee machines that recognize you and suggest types of drinks.

The Net Zero Example

Smart buildings connect a range of subsystems to ensure data and intelligence is shared. When Deloitte designed its Amsterdam HQ, the company set out with the help of Schneider Electric to create a connective benchmark for energy efficiency. Their bold idea was to create a smart building that generates more energy than it consumes. Through a collaborative IoT platform, Deloitte can now easily connect systems and collect building data to create algorithms, which optimize the comfort and productivity of employees while maximizing energy efficiency. With real-time access to critical building data, Deloitte has the power to control several systems from a single platform.

The result was the “The Edge,” a net zero energy office building. After receiving at the time of its completion the highest sustainability score of 98.4 percent by British rating agency BREEAM, it was labeled one of the greenest offices in the world.

Smart buildings are becoming even more enticing. With The Edge as an example of what is possible, occupants looking for more tech perks and greater environmental regulation, don’t expect this interest to disappear anytime soon.

Related articles:

Smart Buildings at Cisco, Intel and Microsoft

“Smart City” Growth from Coast to Coast

________________________

Ryan Lahti is the managing principal of OrgLeader and author of The Finesse Factor. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: The Edge, Flickr)

With all of the recent advancements in automation whether due to robots or computerization/artificial intelligence, how will the workforce be affected? There seems to be a difference in opinion depending upon whose research you consider and how the research was conducted. For example, some research uses an occupation-based approach to gauge impact while others use an approach based on job tasks.

Oxford University research in 2013 calculated the potential impact of computerization on 702 occupations in the U.S. labor market. It estimated about 47 percent of total U.S. employment is at risk. This work also provided evidence that wages and educational attainment have a strong negative relationship with an occupation’s probability of computerization.

In its 2016 work, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated the automatibility of jobs for 21 OECD countries based on a task-based approach. In contrast to other studies, OECD took into account the heterogeneity of workers’ tasks within occupations. This task-based work found automation had a substantially lower impact. On average across the 21 OECD countries, 9 percent of jobs are automatable. This work found noticeable differences across OECD countries. For instance, while the share of automatable jobs is 6 percent in Korea, the corresponding share is 12 percent in Austria. Differences between countries may reflect general differences in workplace organization, differences in previous investments into automation technologies as well as differences in the education of workers across countries.

A recent 2017 study conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that automation now has the potential to change the daily work activities of everyone, from miners and landscape gardeners to commercial bankers, fashion designers, welders and CEOs. McKinsey focused on individual activities rather than entire occupations. Given currently demonstrated technologies, very few occupations—less than 5 percent—are candidates for full automation (i.e., every activity making up these occupations is automated). However, almost every occupation has partial automation potential—a significant percentage of its activities could be automated. McKinsey estimated that about half of all the activities people are paid to do in the world’s workforce could potentially be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies.

This being said, McKinsey believes the impact of automation will be gradual, and five key factors will influence the pace and extent of its adoption. First is technical feasibility, since the technology has to be invented, integrated and adapted into solutions that automate specific activities. Second is the cost of developing and deploying solutions, which affects the business case for adoption. Third are labor market dynamics, including the supply, demand, and costs of human labor as an alternative to automation. Fourth are economic benefits, which could include higher throughput and increased quality, as well as labor cost savings. Finally, regulatory and social acceptance can affect the rate of adoption even when deployment makes business sense. Taking all of these factors into account, McKinsey estimates it will take decades for automation’s effect on current work activities to play out in its entirety.

Much of the current debate about automation has focused on the potential for mass unemployment, but people will need to continue working alongside machines to produce the growth in per capita GDP to which countries around the world aspire. Therefore, McKinsey productivity estimates assume that people displaced by automation will find other employment. Many workers will have to change, and it expects business processes to be transformed.

The size of labor force shifts over many decades that automation technologies can unleash is not without precedent. It is similar in magnitude to the long-term, technology-enabled shifts away from agriculture in developed countries’ workforces in the 20th century. Those shifts did not result in long-term mass unemployment, because they were accompanied by the creation of new types of work. No one can definitively say whether things will be different this time, but McKinsey’s analysis shows that humans will still be needed in the workforce: the total productivity gains McKinsey estimates will only come about if people work alongside machines.

The McKinsey study further highlights how automation can be an engine of productivity and economic growth that can help with the demographic challenges most nations will face as their populations age. Today, there are 46 million Americans over the age of 65 (15 percent of the population). By 2060, the over-65 group is projected to hit 98 million people (24 percent of the population). So, automation-powered economic growth could be a substantial benefit.

As the work by Oxford, the OECD and McKinsey show, automation will continue to impact the workforce and economy over time. Given all of the factors discussed, determining its exact impact is not clear cut. Therefore, looking at the pace of automation is probably better in the form of ranges and approximations rather than specific predictions. Furthermore, any analysis of impact should fully consider the benefits just as much as the drawbacks of automation as they relate to workforces and economies.

Related posts:

Robots, Automation and Workforce Reduction

———–

Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Tesla Motors Assembly Line, Flickr)

Smart manufacturing and the fourth industrial revolution (a.k.a. industry 4.0) have been mentioned in public forums and the media quite a bit. This month, President Obama announced that a Los Angeles-based team was selected to lead a new smart manufacturing hub bankrolled with $140 million in public-private funds. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been talking a lot about the fourth industrial revolution in a number of speeches. Like many people, you may be curious about smart manufacturing and industry 4.0 including how they are related.

Andrew Waycott summarizes the industrial revolution progression and the connection to smart manufacturing well in IndustryWeek:

1. The first industrial revolution started in England in the 18th century. Think: mechanical looms.
2. The second centered on electrically-powered mass production, near the start of the 20th century. Think: Henry Ford and assembly lines.
3. The third is electronics, robotics, and IT. Think: computers enter the office and manufacturing space.
4. The fourth is about harnessing the power of data. More specifically, it’s about big data, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence. It includes smart manufacturing. Early computers did what humans could do, but computers are now faster and more efficient. Smart manufacturing puts machines in the business of real decision-making—through calculations outside the range of human capabilities. Think: the data tells us what to do.

What drives smart manufacturing? According to Conrad Leiva, VP Product Strategy and Alliances at iBasetbut, the following provide the building blocks for smart manufacturing:

Smart Machines and Advanced Robotics

Smart machines communicate with manufacturing systems and display a high level of autonomy. These machines recognize product configurations and diagnostic information, and make decisions to solve problems without human intervention. Robots have enhanced sensors, dexterity and intelligence that enable them to perform tasks without being pre-programmed. Sensors make them aware of the environment and safer for the people around them.

Industrial Internet of Things

Manufacturing devices with network and internet connectivity — from mobile tablets to smart shelves to sensors embedded in automation controls to smart machines — are active participants in event-driven, self-healing manufacturing processes integrated with open standards that support connectivity via the internet.

Cloud Services

Cloud software and platform services are delivered over the internet. They enable convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly deployed with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Big Data Processing Capabilities

Big data tools, like streaming analytics, enable processing of large streams of data coming out of connected devices to support operational visibility, analysis and diagnostics over physical assets, processes and supply chains. Harnessing the power of big data analytics will allow manufacturers to not only analyze trends but also to predict equipment lifespan, capacity fluctuation, and demand patterns.

Clearly “smart manufacturing” and the “fourth industrial revolution” are more than just buzzwords. They are going to help reshape how things are made by companies in the U.S. and abroad.

———–

Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: DSC00449, Flickr)

How secure is your industrial control system? According to Reuters, a U.S. government cybersecurity official warned that there has been an increase in attacks that penetrate industrial control system networks over the past year. Industrial control systems are computers that control operations of industrial processes, from energy plants and steel mills to cookie factories and breweries.

“We see more and more that are gaining access to that control system layer,” said Marty Edwards, who runs the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT). U.S. firms partner with ICS-CERT to investigate suspected cyber attacks on industrial control systems as well as corporate networks. Edwards said he believed the increase in attacks was mainly because more control systems are directly connected to the Internet. “I am very dismayed at the accessibility of some of these networks…they are just hanging right off the tubes,” he said in an interview at the recent S4 infrastructure security conference.

Interest in critical infrastructure security has surged since late last month when Ukraine authorities blamed a power outage on a cyber attack from Russia, which would make it the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. ICS-CERT reported in an alert that it had identified malware used in the attack in Ukraine as BlackEnergy 3, a variant of malware that the agency said in 2014 had infected some U.S. critical infrastructure operators. A Department of Homeland Security official said on Tuesday that government investigators have not confirmed whether the BlackEnergy malware caused the Ukraine incident.

What’s been changing lately is the level of granularity being offered by different companies to address specific ICS issues beyond general IT cybersecurity tactics. Examples of this movement were on display at the ARC Forum in Orlando, Florida. At the conference, NextNine, a provider of operational technology (OT) cybersecurity management tools, announced that it has added the ability to auto-discover assets in industrial and critical infrastructure environments. According to NextNine, its system now automates the mapping of critical assets across multiple remote sites. This allows the system to centrally monitor those assets to ensure compliance with corporate and regulatory security policy and protect the assets by rolling out patches, updates and policy changes.

“Complete and accurate [asset] inventory is a pre-requisite for reducing cybersecurity and operational risks, and is often a considerable operational challenge to overcome without a proper automated software tool,” said Shmulik Aran, NextNine’s CEO. Aran noted that NextNine developed its auto-discovery capability to address the “tedious and costly process” of having to manually discover and create an inventory of assets to monitor in industrial environments. He added that the new auto-discovery capability “passively identifies all devices thereby eliminating any danger of disrupting the operation by active scanning.”

In addition to NextNine, there are some new players coming into the ICS arena. A new cybersecurity company called Indegy claims to offer “the first cybersecurity platform that provides comprehensive visibility into the critical control layer of OT networks.” The platform reportedly detects logic changes to controllers regardless of whether they are performed over the network, locally on the device, by malware, or by a human being. It automatically discovers all controllers on ICS networks and routinely validates their logic, firmware version and configuration to identify any unauthorized or unintended changes. Indegy also monitors and logs all network activity including instructions sent to controllers such as modifying the temperature, pressure, and rotation speed of operational equipment.

For more information, see Automation World.

———–

Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Industrial Control Panel, Flickr)

Until recently, building automation, lighting controls, fire safety and other base building systems were designed to support a single building service and operated independently on proprietary networks and cables. As Green-Buildings.com explains in a recent article, buildings continue to evolve in intelligence. So, it’s becoming more common to see building automation systems incorporate the control of energy use, fire safety, power, security and lighting systems.

According to Forbes, green building’s emphasis on integrated design and whole-building performance has accelerated a convergence into a single platform that transforms a fragmented, vertical value chain into an integrated, horizontal value chain. This convergence of information and communications technology and physical infrastructure is providing building owners and occupants with actionable information about a building or space that allows them to manage that building or space more effectively.

This green-induced convergence is also shaking up the competitive dynamics of the commercial real estate market. A variety of companies ranging from industrial conglomerates like Schneider Electric and Johnson Controls to start-ups like BuildingIQ and JouleX are scrambling to take advantage of this convergence by developing integrated building information, management and controls platforms. Schneider Electric, the French distribution automation and energy management conglomerate, has invested more than $2 billion in strategic acquisitions. This includes Summit Energy Services, Telvent and Viridity Energy‘s EnergyCenter 2.0 product.

A small number of well-positioned players in the property management industry have developed similar portfolio-management platforms by partnering with software and controls companies. For example, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), the global real estate services and property management firm, engaged Pacific Controls, an emerging leader in automation and controls solutions for buildings and infrastructure, to develop the IntelliCommand system.

The IntelliCommand platform combines cloud-based, automation technology with flesh-and-blood engineers and facility management experts to effectively operate building portfolios located worldwide. Now, JLL uses IntelliCommand for 24/7, real-time remote monitoring and control capabilities to ensure that all building systems operate at peak efficiency.

IntelliCommand is expected to reduce energy costs by an estimated 18 percent in the first two years of operation, according to JLL. The long-term value proposition includes fewer business disruptions, continuous commissioning and reduced operating risks. “With IntelliCommand, building equipment and operational issues are resolved before they become complaints, problems or failures,” said Chris Browne, International Director of Integrated Facilities Management at JLL. Given the potential of systems like IntelliCommand, look for more organizations to do what JLL has done.

———–

Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: LEEDS Green Building, Flickr)

According to Headwaters, an investment bank in Denver, the $85 billion sensor market has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 7.5 percent over the past three years. This market is expected to grow to more than $115 billion by 2019.

Nowhere is demand more significant than in the industrial space, accounting for more than a third of the sensor market. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is expected to stimulate huge demand for sensors. As articles from Automation World and Automation.com point out, IIoT is nothing without sensors to measure pressures, positions, temperatures and other important production parameters. The fundamental components of an automation (or other) system are sensors, because they are the “eyes, ears, and fingers” of any system. Sensors and IIoT essentially feed off of each other. As IIoT applications grow, the sensor market will expand. Likewise, continued innovation in sensor technologies is helping to fuel the expansion of IIoT capabilities.

As a more mature end market, industrial applications focus on high-end rather than high-volume production with demand for sensors that can be used in harsh environments with high reliability, precision and miniaturization. And as machine-to-machine (M2M) communications become more sophisticated, sensors are helping to enable predictive maintenance, asset monitoring and data analytics for production efficiency gains.

In process automation, systems for process control, process safety, operations management and asset optimization call for the increased use of sensors for measurement and analytical instrumentation as well as control for industrial settings. Headwaters reports, “The recurring theme of integrating multiple sensor technologies with software analytics will enhance the speed and precision of the information flow driving production performance, reliability and safety…leading to superior products or processes.”

There are a number of interesting developments that provide a glimpse into the near future of sensing. More sensors are showing up in the automotive industry (with connected and self-driving cars creating a huge demand) and healthcare applications (health monitoring and medical diagnostics being key). Furthermore, an Israeli firm has developed the world’s first nanotech-based “electronic nose” to sniff out security threats like bombs, biological warfare agents and toxic liquids. The system was designed by Tel Aviv-based Tracense Systems and can detect even the smallest amounts of material. “Our ‘laboratory-on-a-chip’ nano-sensors can detect a wide range of chemical threats, such as explosives, chemical and biological warfare agents, in air, solid and liquid samples, at extremely low concentrations, unmatched by existing technologies,” said Dr. Ricardo Osiroff, the company’s CEO. “Our system meets and beats the capabilities of sniffing dogs and other animals.” Given all of this information, sensor technologies appear to be just scratching the surface of their potential.

———–

Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: Flat Chip Temperature Sensors, Flickr)

You may have noticed the term “smart building” coming up more frequently in business conversations and publications these days. According to the Continental Automated Buildings Association, an intelligent (aka “smart”) building applies technologies to improve the building’s environment and functionality for occupants and tenants while controlling costs. Is a smart building a pipe dream, or is it a viable reality? Three linchpin companies in the technology industry offer an answer.

Cisco, Intel and Microsoft

As a starting point, let’s take a look at Cisco Systems Inc. Cisco Canada’s president Bernadette Wightman believes the new Canadian headquarters for Cisco will be the first truly smart building in North America. In this new facility, building services, from lighting and climate control to security and elevators, will be monitored and managed through a core network of fiber cabling. Tenants will be able to view their energy consumption and other metrics in real time. Even the blinds on the windows will be computer controlled. Communications providers will only be permitted to connect to a basement hub, and their signals will be distributed from there to their proper homes via switches on each floor.

Furthermore, LED lighting receives its power over Ethernet cables instead of electrical wires. Each light will have its own IP address and will be individually controlled through a computer or a smartphone app. This will allow employees to adjust the lights in real time (e.g., dimming them during a teleconference to eliminate screen glare). Cisco also plans to install motion sensors to prevent unoccupied rooms from wasting power with full lighting. The net results of Cisco’s smart building technology are energy savings and a centralized infrastructure that increases flexibility for tenants using it.

At Microsoft, Darrell Smith (Director of Facilities and Energy) and his team are transforming the company’s 125-building, 41,664-employee headquarters into one of the smartest corporate campuses going today. Smith recognized the potential of smart buildings and worked with his engineering colleagues to create a data-driven, software solution that is saving Microsoft millions of dollars in campus operating costs.

Intel is currently using smart building technology in two different ways. First, it is deploying Internet of Things-enabled sensors to capture data that it can analyze to improve its factories. For example, the chip manufacturer will be able to analyze pressure variation and monitor the status of complex equipment to detect any potential failures. Intel estimates an increase of $30 million in output when such systems are deployed across its assembly and test facilities. Second, Intel is working on saving employees time to find a conference room. On average, it takes employees three minutes to locate a meeting room which results in a loss of 11,400 hours per year. The objective is to help employees see available rooms in real time. By fitting offices with motion, temperature, light and door sensors, Intel is looking for more ways to increase efficiency by utilizing automation.

Cisco, Intel, Microsoft and other organizations that are starting to use smart building technology realize that they can be more efficient with their facilities, especially when it comes to energy. Office buildings, hotels, stores, schools, hospitals, malls and other such commercial structures are responsible for up to 40 percent of the world’s total energy consumption. In the U.S. alone, businesses spend about $100 billion on energy every year. As Microsoft’s Smith explains, “Buildings have been built and run the same way for the last 30 to 50 years. This isn’t a Microsoft problem. It’s an industry problem.”

The Market and the Myths

According to The Global Intelligent Building Automation Technologies Market Forecasts 2014 -2020 report, the market for intelligent building automation technologies is likely to increase as better tools and technologies are introduced. North America leads the intelligent building automation technologies market followed by the EMEA region. For those organizations that are still on the fence about the benefits of smart building technology, Environmental Leader debunked common myths that provide the basis for the fence sitting:

Myth 1: Smart building technologies are expensive. Smart building technology investments typically pay for themselves within one or two years by delivering energy savings and other operational efficiencies.

Myth 2: Smart buildings are only about energy. A smart building management system can do a number of things including detect potential equipment failure. Knowing the right time to repair or replace equipment extends machinery life, and reduces facility staff, operations and replacement costs.

Myth 3: Smart buildings can only be new buildings. All types of buildings (whether residential or commercial) can be built or retrofitted to become highly automated and smart. Even very specialized facilities such as laboratories can be outfitted with smart building technologies.

Myth 4: Smart building technologies are not interoperable. In the past, building automation equipment and controls were designed as proprietary systems. However, affordable new technologies now make it possible to gather data from different systems produced by any manufacturer.

Myth 5: Smart systems don’t make a building more attractive to tenants. Anything that improves energy efficiency, reduces occupancy cost and improves productivity is valuable to tenants. The Cisco, Microsoft and Intel examples previously discussed provide evidence of the value.

Myth 6: Smart buildings are complicated to operate. Combined with a smart building management system, a smart building is often easier to operate and maintain than a building that lacks automated systems.

———–

Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

(Photo: BeoLink Local Scenes, Flickr)

Simple and Complex Tasks

As workhorses that quickly and accurately perform simple, repetitive tasks requiring no decision making, industrial robots complete jobs that are mundane and demotivating for humans. For example, these robots are traditionally found in large companies where they drill and weld automotive parts and transfer items from one production line to another as humans perform more complex tasks alongside them.

While these industrial robots fit a need for large manufacturing organizations, small- and medium-sized companies cannot afford to spend money on a machine that only does one or two things, because they do short product runs with fast changeovers. Companies such as Universal Robots and Rethink Robotics stepped into this market to offer robots that meet this need. As Mechanical Engineering magazine points out, these robots can be programmed within a few hours by a technician in manner that is similar to teaching a child to swing a baseball bat. This programmability enables the robots to optimize routines for a given task and be moved to different production lines as needed which frees up employee capacity for other work. Furthermore, these robots are equipped with force sensors which allow them to stop in much shorter times than traditional, heavy-duty industrial robots creating a safer for environment for people.

As you approach the more glamorous end of the robotics spectrum, there is a shift from the industrial robots described above to ones that move freely to perform more complex tasks in collaboration with humans. According to The New York Times, advances in artificial intelligence and decreased cost of sensors have improved areas such as machine vision that allows Google’s driverless car to be completely automated without the need for a steering wheel or brake pedal.

The Impact on Humans

For those individuals who are concerned about humans losing jobs to robots in the near future, David Autor (a leading M.I.T. scholar of labor markets) provides some comfort. He argues that even as robots have become better at rote tasks, they have not progressed that far in other areas where humans will continue to have an advantage. From his perspective, the tasks that have proven to be the most difficult to automate are those that demand flexibility, judgment and common sense—skills that are more tacit in nature. He further argues that mankind has consistently feared that technology will replace its jobs, and mankind has consistently been wrong. When some jobs faded in the past, new opportunities inevitably were created, and the workforce adapted.

If technology produces other innovations like driverless cars and more advanced robots, there should be opportunities for humans to work in collaboration with them. While Autor’s points are valid, two critical factors are required to ensure the workforce adapts. First, learning offerings must be available from companies and educational institutions. Second, the workforce needs to make use of these offerings in a timely manner.

For more information see, Worries of Killer Robots Rise, Worker-Friendly Robots and Why the Robots Might Not Take Our Jobs.

———–

Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti

The market is segmented into end-user industries that include automotive, plastics, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, power, textiles, semiconductors and food processing. In 2012, the automotive industry held the largest market share, and it is expected to keep this position during the course of the forecast period based on a growing demand for productivity. The pharmaceutical industry is projected to show strong growth during the forecast period since industrial automation improves efficiency by decreasing the amount of time needed for compounding, washing, labeling, packaging and filling.

In terms of geography, the Americas (North and South America) captured the largest share of the industrial controls and automation market in 2012 as a result of re-engineering older industrial segments. More specifically, this was due to the adoption of new technologies and growing demand for mass production. Going forward, the Asia Pacific region is projected to experience substantial growth during the forecast period based on large investments in the power industry in this locale.

To obtain the full report, click here: Industrial Controls and Robotics Market

———–

Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti