Showing posts with label Precise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Precise. Show all posts

April 12, 2019

Gotta Love FANUC


I love FANUC industrial robots. 

They are made by a secretive company in Japan and they are #1 in workplace automation worldwide! 

They have over half a million installed industrial robots around the world.

Their robots are on assembly lines making everything from "cars and smartphones to beverages and drugs."  They also are in Tesla and Amazon...so you know they are pretty much everywhere. 

FANUC has customers in 108 countries supported by 263 service locations. 

Their robots are made by...that's right other robots...80% is automated

These robots are strong, fast, and precise, and they can do dangerous work. 

This company is the future of jobs, productivity, efficiency. 

But of course, people are still the brains behind the brawn.  ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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April 10, 2018

On Time Is Late

Smart saying I heard today on time management:
Early is on time.
On time is late.
Late is unacceptable.
Having grown up in a very precise environment,  I can certainly appreciate this. 

Seriously, from a Yekke (Jewish German background), we were taught to be 15 to 30 minutes early--i.e. on time--for everything. 

I remember starting to get "little" reminders to get ready and get out the door well in advance and numerous times before the clock struck. 

Fashionably late or any other type is not in the vocabulary and frankly is a complete f*ckin insult. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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July 26, 2014

Antimissile System for Airlines


Elbit Systems has an antimissile system that can protect commercial airlines from short range, shoulder fired missiles (MANPADs).

The military air fleet of the U.S., U.K., and Australia already have installed such devices to protect them.

Another system by Northrop Grumman is installed for heads of state like on Air Force One and Germany has ordered it for their Chancellor's plane. 

But the Elbit C-Music is being used already on Israel's commercial airlines, El AL and Israir. 

The thermal targeting device of C-Music uses a precise laser to deflect the incoming heat seeking ground to air missiles and save the passengers and plane. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, a bill to mandate such devices for American commercial airlines would cost approximately $43 billion over 20 years. 

While this system would not work against the type of sophisticated multiple launch rocket systems that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, it would go along way to enhance our anti-terrorism measures and protect Americans and other travelers coming to/from the U.S. 

Please don't shoot down this idea...  ;-)
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August 25, 2013

Drone Warfare: Integration At Its Best

I learned a lot about Drone Warfare reading and thinking about "The Killing Machines" in The Atlantic by David Bowden. 

The benefits of drones for military use are numerous:

- Stealth: Drones can be relatively small (some are now even the size of bugs) and they can survey from vehicles that are aerial, terrestrial, underwater, or I would imagine, even subterranean. In a sense, even a spy satellite is a type of drone, isn't it? 

- Persistent: They can hover unmanned over enemy territory for not only hours, but also days at a time, and switching in replacement drones can create a virtually continuous stream of surveillance for months or years, depending on the need. 

- Powerful: The sensors on a drone can include high-definition cameras, eavesdropping devices, radar, infrared, "and a pixel array so dense, that the device can zoom in clearly on objects only inches wide from well over 15,000 feet above." Further, with features like Gorgon Stare, multiple cameras linked together can view entire cities in one feel swoop.   

- Long-range: Drones can function doing reconnaissance or surveillance far away and deep into enemy territory. With drones, no one is too distant or remote as to be untouchable. 

- Lethality: Drones can carry missiles such as The Hellfire, a "100-pound antitank missile" and other weapons that can act expediently on information without the need to call in additional support. 

- Precise: Drones can hit targets with amazing precision--"It targets indiscriminate killers with exquisite discrimination." 

- Safety: Drones carry out their work unmanned with (or without) controllers stationed at safe distances away--sometimes thousands of miles back at the homeland. 

- Expendable: Drones themselves are throwaway. As with a bee, a drone is more or less useless when disconnected from the hive. Similarly, a military "drone is useless as an eyeball disconnected from the brain," since drones function only as an extension of back-end satellite links, data processors, intelligence analysts, and its controller." 

Overall, the great value of drones is their integration of technologies: vehicles, global telecommunications, optics, sensors, supercomputers, weapon systems, and more. 

To me, between the questions of fairness, legality, and privacy--drones are being given a bum rap. 

- Fairness:  Just because one side has a technology that the other doesn't, should not mean it's wrong to use it. This is what competition and evolution is all about. I remember learning in school, when children would complain to the teacher that something was unfair, and the teacher would reply, "life is unfair!" This doesn't mean we should use a shotgun approach, but rather use what we got, appropriately. 

- Legality: Is it legal to kill targets rather than apprehending them, trying them, and otherwise punishing them? This is where sincere deliberations come in on whether someone is a "lawful target" (e.g. enemy combatant), "imminent threat" (e.g. self-defense), whether other alternatives are viable (e.g. collateral damage assessments), and will killing them do more hard than good to foreign relations, influence, and even possibly breeding new hate and terror, rather than quelling it. 

- Privacy: The issue of privacy comes less into play with military matters and more with respect to domestic use for law enforcement and other civilian uses (from agriculture to urban planning). The key is protect citizens from being unduly monitored, tracked, and scrutinized--where freedom itself is under big-brother attack and we all become mere drones ourselves in a national hive of complacency and brainless obedience. 

Rather than scaling back drones use, I liked Mary Ellen O'Connell vision of new drones "capable of delivering a warning--'Come out with your hands up!' and then landing to make an arrest using handcuffs."

This is the promise of technology to learn from mistakes of the past and always bring possibilities of making things better in the future. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Don McCullough)
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October 30, 2010

The Coloring Book of Leadership


In a leadership course this week, I was introduced to the “Insights Wheel of Color Energies,” a framework for understanding people’s personalities and leadership styles.

In the Color Energies framework, there are four types of personalities/styles:

  • “Fiery Red”—The Director—competitive, demanding, determined, strong-willed, purposeful, and driving— they seek to “do it NOW.”
  • “Cool Blue”—The Observer—cautious, precise, deliberate, questioning, formal, and analytical—they seek to “do it right.”
  • “Sunshine Yellow”—The Inspirer—sociable, dynamic, demonstrative, enthusiastic, persuasive, and expressive. They seek to “do it together.”
  • “Earth Green”—The Supporter—caring, encouraging, sharing, patient, relaxed, and amiable—they seek to “do it in a caring way.”

There is no one best type—each is simply a personal preference. And further, each of us is “incomplete and imperfect”.
  • The one who seeks to “do it right” may miss the point with their “analysis paralysis” when something needs to be done in a time-critical fashion.
  • Similarly, the leader that’s focused on “just getting it done now” may be insensitive to providing adequate support for their people, or collaboration with others in the organization.

We saw this clearly in the class. After each person was asked to self-identify which color they were most closely aligned to, it was clear that people were oriented toward one or maybe two types, and that they did have an individual preference.

While no framework is 100% accurate, I like this one as it seems to capture key distinctions between personalities and also helped to make me more self-aware. (I am Cool Blue and Fiery Red, in case you ever decide to “tangle” with me :-).

Combining Color Energies with other personality assessment frameworks, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI), can help us to understand both ourselves and others.

With that knowledge we can work together more productively and more pleasantly, as we empathize with others rather than puzzling about why they act the way they do.

Once we start to identify the “color personalities” of others whom we know and work with, we can better leverage our combined strengths.

To me, therefore, leaders have to surround themselves with other excellent people, who can complement their personality and leadership styles so as to fill in the natural gaps that we each possess.

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