Business News

The leading independent provider of smart safety solutions, HIMA, is speaking at the Singapore Safety Case Symposium to address the functional safety aspects of the new legislation for process plants and bulk storage facilities. This symposium, from 14 to 15 March and organised by TÜV Rheinland, focuses on facilities that are considered a Major Hazard Installation (MHI) under the new Workplace Safety and Health regulations. HIMA’s expert will speak on the role of functional safety in helping industry practitioners currently administering and overseeing the safety case for their facility to understand how to fulfil the technical requirements of the new legislation. Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower has introduced the Major Hazards Installations (MHI) Regulations under the Workplace Safety and Health Act, to be implemented from the last quarter of 2017 through 2019. The core feature of the MHI Regulations is the Safety Case Regime where the submission of a safety case is compulsory. The Safety Case Regime is a structured set of documentation that sets out how major accidents are prevented and the risks to people and environment mitigated at MHIs. Sujith Panikkar, Senior Consultant Functional Safety/ Safety Instrumented Systems, HIMA Asia Pacific, who will be speaking at the symposium, said: “The safety case and functional safety are closely related. Moreover, the functional safety aspect of building the safety case tends to be the most important, and also the most technically complex. Many working in MHIs will need assistance in building their safety case to comply with regulators. So through our collaboration with TÜV Rheinland, we hope to help those tasked with this challenge. “The complex operating environment and the presence of large amounts of hazardous chemicals at MHIs mean that any accident can potentially result in catastrophic consequences. Therefore, strict compliance with the legislation is essential in ensuring a safe […]

Tanaka Holdings Co. Ltd. announces the start of sample shipments of SJeva, a newly-developed, high-quality Au deposition material, by Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo. The new deposition material has higher purity than earlier products, making it possible to reduce the amount of precious metals used, increase productivity and cut costs by reducing processing, and raise recoverability and recyclability. By improving manufacturing methods, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo successfully reduced the amount of non-metallic inclusions in the deposition material compared to conventional materials. Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo previously handled Au deposition materials with a purity of 4N (99.99% gold content) to 5N (99.999% gold content), and the new deposition material enhances the lineup of high-quality products. By using a deposition material with extremely low non-metallic inclusions, contaminants that collect on the surface during melting of the deposition material are reduced, eliminating the need for cleaning. The high-purity deposition material also makes it possible to shorten the preheating time before film formation, decreasing consumption of deposition material that does not contribute to film formation and reducing costs. In addition, the new deposition material contains low levels of gas, and as a result, a reduction in splash phenomenon from the deposition source during film formation can be expected, and it is possible to reduce the number of particles[4] that form on substrates, even during high-rate deposition. As a result of the above properties and benefits of the new deposition material, it is expected to contribute to higher end-user productivity and lower costs when manufacturing final products that use deposition materials such as micro-wiring and MEMS in the semiconductor fields as well as optical devices, LEDs, and medical equipment. Benefits of the New Deposition Material – Reduced number of cleaning processes Usually, various shapes of deposition materials including pellet, plate, ribbon, wire, and grain shapes are used depending on […]

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant This examination of the iPhone includes analysis of both the enormous cultural impact of the device and a history of its manufacturing process. It was on the shortlist of finalists for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. “‘The One Device’ is a road map for design and engineering genius, an anthropology of the modern age and an unprecedented view into one of the most secretive companies in history. This is the untold account, ten years in the making, of the device that changed everything,” the Financial Times says. The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams, by Sam Walker The deputy editor for enterprise at the Wall Street Journal and a former sports columnist, Walker identified the preeminent sports teams throughout history and determined they all had an influential captain at the time they reigned supreme. He then analyses the seven commonalities of those captains. Reset, by Ellen Pao This is Pao’s story of suing the esteemed venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for discrimination. She lost the suit, but the litigation brought attention to the overwhelmingly white, male culture of Silicon Valley. It was a finalist for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. Principles: Life and Work, by Ray Dalio Business and life coach Tony Robbins preaches the importance of constantly educating yourself. The book is Dalio’s explanation of the highly unique leadership strategy he employs at his wildly successful hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson The authors from MIT’s Sloan School of Management explain how businesses can best use artificial intelligence and crowd wisdom and how leaders should manage amid these massive technological changes. “Beneath all the concrete problems it raises, an intriguing question lies at the heart […]

Stephane Kasriel CEO, Upwork ‘For the majority of us, AI will take away the most repetitive and boring tasks’ Whenever I talk to people about the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, it’s clear there is a lot of anxiety surrounding these developments. And no wonder: these technologies already have a huge impact on the world of work, from AI-powered algorithms that recommend optimal routes to maximise Lyft and Uber drivers’ earnings; to machine learning systems that help optimize lists of customer leads so salespeople can be more effective. We’re on the verge of tremendous transformations to work. Millions of jobs will be affected and the nature of work itself may change profoundly. We have an obligation to shape this future — the good news is that we can. It’s easier to see the jobs that will disappear than to imagine the jobs that will be created in the future but are as yet unknown. If, as The Wall Street Journal suggests, we think of AI as a technology that predicts, it’s much easier to map its impact. We must push ourselves to do that and understand the future of work. Here are six principles to keep in mind as we imagine how the world of work will evolve. 1. Expect massive disruption As Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains, we’re in the midst of a “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, after steam power (the first), electric power (the second) and digitisation (the third). The fourth, which incorporates AI and robotics as well as other technologies, will have an even greater impact. Of course, most new technologies create new opportunities at the same time as they eliminate old jobs, but there is rarely a perfect correspondence between these two forces. The people whose jobs […]

-Jonathan Taplin (Jonathan Taplin is Director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab and a former tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band, as well as a film producer for Martin Scorsese. An expert in digital media entertainment, Taplin is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the California Broadband Taskforce and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Council on Technology and Innovation. Fake news. Digital monopolies. Stealth Marketing. This is the story of how the internet, which began as a dream, has become a nightmare and the people that did it. The modern world is defined by vast digital monopolies turning ever-larger profits. Those of us who consume the content that feeds them are farmed for the purposes of being sold ever more products and advertising. Those that create the content – the artists, writers and musicians – are finding they can no longer survive in this unforgiving economic landscape. But it didn’t have to be this way. In Move Fast and Break Things, Jonathan Taplin offers a succinct and powerful history of how online life began to be shaped around the values of the entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel and Larry Page who founded these all-powerful companies. Their unprecedented growth came at the heavy cost of tolerating piracy of books, music and film, while at the same time promoting opaque business practices and subordinating the privacy of individual users to create the surveillance marketing monoculture in which we now live. It is the story of a massive reallocation of revenue in which $50 billion a year has moved from the creators and owners of content to the monopoly platforms. With this reallocation of money comes a shift in power. Google, Facebook and Amazon now enjoy political power on par with Big Oil and Big […]