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2 Tools to Help Automate Your Sales Process

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Back in the day, sales representatives used to spend all day in the field, exploring leads, looking for potential clients and, well, selling.

Now, a sales rep spends less time in the field and more time completing tedious tasks and non-sales activities.

Further on, research suggests that now, sales reps only spend one-third of their day actually making sales, while the other two-thirds are spent on manual tasks such as writing emails, scheduling meetings, prospecting leads and entering data into the computer. [Read more…] about 2 Tools to Help Automate Your Sales Process

Volkswagen opens up its ‘Industrial Cloud’ to other manufacturing and technology companies

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Volkswagen, together with Amazon Web Services and integration partner Siemens, is opening up its Industrial Cloud to other manufacturing and technology companies.

New partner companies will be able to connect with Volkswagen plants and to contribute their own software applications for optimizing production processes to the Industrial Cloud.

VW says the opening up of the platform will help create “a rapidly growing range of industrial software applications for Volkswagen’s plants”. [Read more…] about Volkswagen opens up its ‘Industrial Cloud’ to other manufacturing and technology companies

Continental building supercomputer on Nvidia platform to use for vehicle AI

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Continental is building a supercomputer based on the Nvidia computing platform. The system is intended for vehicle artificial intelligence system training.

The two companies say they are building the high-performance cluster based on Nvidia DGX AI systems, adding that this will “boost autonomous driving development performance”.

The new cluster reduces development time from weeks to hours, say the companies and among its main uses are deep learning, simulation and virtual data generation. [Read more…] about Continental building supercomputer on Nvidia platform to use for vehicle AI

Google to allow 200,000 of its employees to work from home until next summer

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Google, the world’s biggest internet company, is to allow 200,000 of its employees to work from home until this time next year, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal website. 

Although Google officially has just over 100,000 full-time employees, the company’s decision will affect its freelance workers, part-timers and contract staff.

The directive comes amid the chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with the US seeing an upsurge in cases in recent weeks, after becoming the nation with the world’s highest number of deaths caused by the Covid-19 virus. [Read more…] about Google to allow 200,000 of its employees to work from home until next summer

Automation and digitalization ‘competitive edge in volatile market’, says Siemens

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Automation and digitalization “offer a significant competitive edge in a volatile market environment”, according to Siemens.

Europe’s largest engineering company says the current situation creates major challenges for industrial companies worldwide – and shows that digitalized and highly automated production is more important than ever when it comes to gaining a competitive edge.

This is the only way that companies can react to current and future challenges with the required degree of flexibility, says Siemens. [Read more…] about Automation and digitalization ‘competitive edge in volatile market’, says Siemens

Important 2020 Trend: Price Alignment Automation

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By Thomas R. Cutler

Automation solutions have been adapted and adjusted promoting the ease of setting and managing pricing boundaries for manufacturers.

When corporate objectives include rapidly and repeatedly adjusting prices at the most granular level, automation must be designed to alleviate the pain by using simple rules to derive prices.

Previously, most industrial business decision-makers feared an extensive implementation time, complexity, and significant costs for pricing technology. [Read more…] about Important 2020 Trend: Price Alignment Automation

ifm and CloudRail agree strategic partnership to provide IIoT solutions

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Sensor and automation specialist ifm and the IIoT expert CloudRail have agreed a strategic partnership to pool their skills to improve their positions on the strongly growing market for professional IIoT and cloud solutions. (See video below.)

Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or digitisation – there are many terms to describe the inexorable trend of networking machines, processes and people. What they all have in common is that they refer to interdisciplinary processes.

Felix Kollmar, CEO of CloudRail, says: “The IIoT has long ago ceased to be an exclusive topic of operation technology (OT).” [Read more…] about ifm and CloudRail agree strategic partnership to provide IIoT solutions

Top 20 programmable logic controller manufacturers

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Sometimes described as “the workhorse of industrial automation”, a programmable logic controller, or PLC, is a computing device that is specially designed for use in an industrial operation.

A PLC can take many shapes and sizes, but in most instances it does not look like a conventional desktop computer like the ones you find in offices or in homes – a PLC has no display screen, no hard drive, and no keyboard.

PLCs started out in the automotive manufacturing trade, although they can now be found in almost all sectors, where they tend to replace relays.

Relays are devices that essentially turn machines on and off, and are said to be time-consuming and complex to use compared to PLCs. Relays also require more operational downtime when they need to be reconfigured. PLCs are estimated by one research company to reduce downtime from 20 percent to about 4 percent. [Read more…] about Top 20 programmable logic controller manufacturers

InOrbit raises $2.6 million for its cloud robotics business

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InOrbit, a provider of cloud-based robot management software, has closed $2.6 million in seed round investment.

The funding was led by Animo Ventures, with participation by Yamaha Motor Ventures and Laboratory Silicon Valley, Kärcher New Venture and other key institutional and individual investors.

InOrbit’s software-as-a-service enables robotics companies and operators to develop, deploy and orchestrate autonomous robots at global scale. [Read more…] about InOrbit raises $2.6 million for its cloud robotics business

Cloud robotics market predicted to grow to $157.8 billion by 2030

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The global market for cloud robotics is predicted to grow to $157.8 billion by 2030, according to ABI Research.

The analyst says cloud computing will be the “great enabler of mobile robotics”, and a massive, multibillion-dollar service opportunity over the next next 10 years.

Though only in its nascent stages, the value of cloud infrastructure to robots is key for both application, encompassing development, configuration, and installation; and operation, which includes maintenance, analytics, and control. [Read more…] about Cloud robotics market predicted to grow to $157.8 billion by 2030