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MONEY& JJOBSSUNDAY, APRIL 20, 2014

MADE IN THEMIDLANDS

Robots come in handy

Warren Buffett’s son How-ard was a photographer first, afarmer second and a philanthro-pist third. His friendship withAssociated Press photographerAnja Niedringhaus grew fromphotography.“I really admired her work,”

he told The World-Herald. Theyhad met when she won theCourage in Journalism Awardfrom the International Women’sMedia Foundation in 2005.“I could have stayed out of

trouble most of my life butalways have been drawn to thepeople who suffer in difficultsituations,” she said during thatawards ceremony.When Buffett put togeth-

er “Fragile,” the book of hisphotos and stories about peopleinvolved in conflict and poverty,he wanted to include one of Nie-dringhaus’ photos from Bosnia.“Then a few

people talk-ed me out ofit because itwould not be100 percentaccurate to saythey were myphotographs,”Buffett said. “Ialways regret-ted not includ-ing it. It was the best conflictphoto I have ever seen.”The two met later in Germa-

ny, and she came to his home inDecatur, Ill., twice. He providedfunds for her to attend HarvardUniversity as a Nieman Fellowin 2007.This month, Buffett arranged

another honor for Niedringhaus.She was shot and killed by agunman in east Afghanistan onApril 4. Within days, Buffett’s

Awardhonorsspiritedjournalist

STEVE JORDON

WARREN WATCH

AnjaNiedringhaus

See Warren Watch: Page 2

J AME S R . B URNET T / THE WORLD -HERA LD

Robots equipped by CapStone Technologies handle 4.2 million pieces of mail daily at First Data, a job that humans used to do. First Data’s Ram Parajuli is at back.

BY COLE EPLEYWORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

The two most productive employ-ees at First Data Corp.’s print mailfacility at 72nd and Pacific Streets arevirtually indistinguishable from eachother.Each has the same name, and

they share Japanese and Nebraskanancestry.Neither takes vacation, and they

don’t have health benefits.They don’t need them, because

they’re robots.And their customized “hands”

were designed by a team of Nebraskaengineers — one each from Omaha,Bellevue, Lincoln and Eagle, accord-ing to the patent award.Together, the two yellow, six-axis

robots made in Japan and their handshandle about 4.2 million pieces ofmail every day at one of the last stopsfor print mail moving through FirstData’s sprawling facility.Where six humans once stood to

perform repetitive, manual labor for

any one of three eight-hour shifts, therobots now grab and hold cardboardsleeves for 14,000 trays of mail aday. The trays travel down the lastfew feet of conveyors before they’restacked onto pallets — by humans —according to their destinations.The robots are called AutoViri,

Latin for “automatic man,” and FritzBuglewicz knows them well. Hisname is included on the patent for theones in action at First Data, one of thestate’s largest bulk mailers.“The secret in the sauce, so to

speak, is the end-of-arm tools,” saidBuglewicz, executive vice presidentof business development at CapStoneTechnologies, the company that devel-oped the tools. “That’s what does thewelding, grasping or packaging, andthat’s what we patent.”With offices in Omaha and a

headquarters in Lincoln, CapStonedeployed its first robotic technologyin Florida in 2005. The company orig-inally formed in 1999 as a business

First Datais one ofthe state’slargest bulkmailers.Trays of mailtravel downconveyorsbeforethey’restacked ontopallets — byhumans —accordingto theirdestinations.

A thriving Nebraska technology company saysit’s ‘the nature of our society’ to automate jobs

See Robots: Page 2

An image taken by AssociatedPress photographer AnjaNiedringhaus in 2010 of an Afghanboy with Canadian soldiers onpatrol in Salavat, southwest ofKandahar, Afghanistan.

CEO OF SPACE: ELONMUSKHASOTHERWORLDLY AMBITIONS. PAGE 3D

Omaha World-Herald 04/20/2014

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2D • SUNDAY, APRIL 20, 2014 OMAHA WORLD-HERALDMONEY & JOBS

Big banks’ new policies onwork schedules may not betaking much of a bite outof the pressure.

THE NEW YORK TIMESThe biggest investment banks

recently signaled a sea change in theircorporate culture, telling their most ju-nior employees to ease up a bit on theirhard-charging work schedules.Like other practices on Wall Street,

however, the more things change, themore they remain the same.A number of young bankers say that

while they can now enjoy a leisurelybrunch or a binge of television watch-ing on Saturdays, their overall work-load has not changed noticeably. It justgets pushed to a different day.“If you have 80 hours of work to do

in a week, you’re going to have 80 hours

of work to do in a week, regardless ofwhether you’re working Saturdays ornot,” said a junior banker at DeutscheBank, who, like the others interviewedfor this article, spoke on the conditionof anonymity because he risked his jobby talking to a reporter. “That workis going to be pushed to Sundays orFriday nights.”“It’s well-intentioned,” he said, “but I

don’t know if it’s actually practical.”Young people on Wall Street have

long been accustomed to workingthrough weekends and into the weehours. But in the last six months, manyof the major banks have instituted whatamounts to a radically new policy: Takea few days off a month, on the week-ends.They are responding in part to fears

across the industry that finance islosing its appeal for bright, ambitiouscollege graduates. Silicon Valley beck-ons, with generous employee perks at

companies like Google and Facebookand the promise of wealth and prestigeat hot technology startups.At the Wharton School of the Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania, traditionallya magnet for aspiring financiers, 25 per-cent of the undergraduate class of 2013entered jobs in investment banking,according to school’s career servicesoffice. That is big decline from the hal-cyon days before the financial crisis. Ofthe class of 2007, 48 percent took jobsin finance.The changes also were spurred by

concerns that rippled through theindustry after a 21-year-old internat Bank of America Merrill Lynch inLondon died last summer. The cause ofdeath was determined to be epilepsy.Unconfirmed reports on online forumssaid that he had worked through threeconsecutive nights as part of his intern-ship.Still, some junior bankers, known as

analysts and associates, are skepticalabout the new policies. With Saturdaydesignated a day of rest at some banks,several bankers said that other days,including Sunday, have become moreintense.At Goldman Sachs, which last fall

instructed junior bankers to stay out ofthe office on Saturdays, one analyst saidhe recently had to work until 4 a.m. onMonday to complete a project on time.He also said he now felt more pressureto get his work done during the week,since he no longer has a full weekend tocomplete assignments.The banks’ approaches to their week-

end policies vary. In February, Barclaysintroduced rules that forbid analysts towork more than 12 consecutive days.One analyst at the firm said recently

that he had worked every day fromThanksgiving to the end of February,including Christmas and New Year’sDay.

“I don’t know if my life improved atall,” he said. “There’s not going to be achange in work just because we say oneday has to be protected.”JPMorgan Chase has given its ana-

lysts the option of taking a “protectedweekend” — Saturday and Sunday —each month. While several analystsspoke positively about the change, one,who recently left the bank, complainedthat the weekends had to be scheduledfour weeks in advance, requiring thekind of planning that can be incom-patible with a young person’s evolvingschedule.To ensure that he could see a preview

of “All the Way” on Broadway in Febru-ary, the former JPMorgan analyst said,he had to submit a request in January.During the show, he was expected tomonitor his email and respond to anyurgent requests.Representatives of JPMorgan,

Barclays and Goldman declined tocomment.

For junior bankers, a day off doesn’t shrink workload

foundation gave $1 million to the women’s mediafoundation to endow the Anja Niedringhaus Cour-age in Photojournalism Award.Each year the award will go to a woman pho-

tojournalist whose work follows in her footsteps.“Facing and surviving danger to uncover thetruth, they raise the bar for reporting under du-ress,” Buffett told the foundation.He said Niedringhaus was a friend “who repre-

sented the best of photojournalism. By creatingthis award, we ensure her spirit lives on. Anja’svoice may be silenced, but our hope is that othervoices who share her commitment become loud-er.”

Invited to ‘real deal’ Cinco deMayo eventThe Cinco de Mayo challenge is on.A Berkshire company’s sale of Warren Buffett

and Charlie Munger “fiesta” ducks — sportingsombreros, mustaches and maracas — has a SouthOmaha activist issuing a public invitation for Buf-fett to join the “real deal” Cinco de Mayo paradeand fiesta.The invite comes as Jose Garcia spotted fliers

announcing Oriental Trading Co.’s sale of the“exclusive” $5 rubber duckies during the May 3shareholders gathering. That same weekend, aparade and celebration on South 24th Street marksthe Mexican holiday.Garcia said he doesn’t begrudge Oriental Trad-

ing or Buffett joining the commercialization ofCinco de Mayo. Most everyone else has done thesame, he said.But, Garcia said, if Buffett’s going to dip his

wing in the fiesta finance, he might considerdropping by the community event, which typical-ly draws thousands. There, Garcia said, Buffettcould mingle with a huge and growing market.Garcia, who runs the Mexican-American

Historical Society of the Midlands, said that untilcompanies “get away from treating us like anexcuse for a fiesta, we’re going to remain a puzzleto your marketers.”Buffett is booked up — he has 30,000 or so

guests in town that day — but Sam Taylor, CEO of

Oriental Trading, said he’d be happy to attend thereal fiesta after the Berkshire meeting. “Please letMr. Garcia know I would welcome the opportunityto attend and appreciate his invitation.”

Fund will vote against boardA financial management fund for Catholic insti-

tutions will vote its Berkshire shares against thecompany’s board of directors on May 3, “due to alack of information on diversity of the compositionof the board” and insufficient background aboutthe directors, according to the Pension & Invest-ments Research Center.Berkshire’s shareholder materials don’t include

photos of the directors, said Christian BrothersInvestment Services spokeswoman Marietta L.Parenti.The group plans to endorse Chairman and CEO

Buffett’s salary package, however, the story said.He received a $100,000 salary, $385,060 worth ofsecurity services and no bonus in 2003. The salaryand bonus figures haven’t changed in decades.Berkshire doesn’t print photos of its directors

but included its first photograph in this year’sannual report: a shot of the corporate staff at itsannual Christmas dinner.

Reputation key for AirbnbGayle King and Charlie Rose didn’t mince words

when they talked with Airbnb founder Brian Ches-ky on CBS last week.

Warren Buffett has asked the online lodgingsite for help in finding reasonably priced roomsduring the weekend when Berkshire HathawayInc. shareholders come to Omaha for their annualmeeting on May 3.King said, “Hookers turn hotels into brothels on

Airbnb. There have been reports of people gettingpenthouses under Airbnb and then trashing theplace or having orgies. What do you say aboutthat? And what are you doing to prevent that fromhappening?”“Well, this is not a new problem to the hospi-

tality industry,” Chesky said. “It’s something theentire hospitality industry has to deal with. Wehave totally zero tolerance in this issue.“And it’s incredibly rare, but we’re going to

work really, really hard. We have a verificationsystem where everyone can verify who the guestsare, and we’re going to continue to double down onthis as we continue to grow.”King said her son uses the service, and his stays

were “really pleasant.”Chesky said the “local experience” is part of

the appeal, as well as generally lower prices thanhotels. “You actually feel like you’re home.”New York City has a law that prevents Airbnb

hosts from paying hotel taxes, he said, whichwould amount to $21 million this year. He’s work-ing with the city to figure out a way to pay the tax.“The whole thing works off a reputation sys-

tem,” he said. “So before you stay, you can readthe reviews of what someone else wrote beforeyou.”Then came the business lesson: “Our first ad-

viser said make something people want,” Cheskysaid. “We focus on building a product people love.”

A regulatory ‘light touch’?Two companies owned by Berkshire are “en-

joying a relatively light touch fromWashington,”James Freeman wrote for a Wall Street Journalonline site last week.“It’s good to be the king of investing,” Freeman

wrote. “And two events yesterday suggest that it’salso good to be a close friend of President Obama.”The first example was a regulatory agency that

“took a restrained action that should neverthe-less help an important sector of the economy,”Freeman wrote, based on a account from attorneyMichael McBride.The Surface Transportation Board held a hear-

ing on delays in fertilizer shipments on Berk-shire’s BNSF Railway and Canadian Pacific. Theregulatory board ordered the railroads to sendshipping data once a week, “thus sending a strongsignal about the STB’s concerns without actuallytelling the railroads what to ship where.”Wrote Freeman: “And to be clear, at the Journal

editorial page we are all for regulatory restraint.But it would be great to see such regulatory re-straint when it comes to companies not owned byMr. Buffett.”The second action involved a decision last year

by the U.S. Justice Department to charge thefinancial rating company Standard & Poor’s withcivil fraud because of its flawed ratings on mort-gage bonds.A federal judge ruled last week that the depart-

ment must turn over documents on the decision.The Justice Department didn’t charge Moody’s,a competing rating service, even though it had“essentially identical ratings on the bonds,” the ar-ticle said. Berkshire owns 11.5 percent of Moody’s.S&P has argued that it was targeted because

it downgraded the nation’s credit rating in 2011,while Moody’s kept the rating high. Buffett hadcriticized S&P for the downgrade.Freeman wrote that the documents going to the

court may show whether Buffett had a role in thegovernment’s decision to keep Moody’s out of thefraud case.“In truth, the case should never have been

brought at all, because ratings judgments aremerely opinions,” he write. “The ratings only havesuch power because of government regulation thathas forced companies to follow them. But howevermisguided the government’s legal theories are,they should be applied equally.”World-Herald staff writer Cindy Gonzalez con-

tributed to this report.The Omaha World-Herald Co. is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1080, steve.jordon@owh.com; twitter.com/buffettOWH

WarrenWatch: Photojournalist drawn to people who suffer and places of conflictContinued from Page 1

engineering group and focused then,as it does now, on lean process im-provement, or accomplishing the taskas well with more efficiency.The company relies on the Coun-

cil Bluffs office of Acieta, formerlyknown as Ellison Technologies Auto-mation, to manufacture the criticalend-of-arm tools that makes its tech-nology possible.CapStone holds another patent for

an end-of-arm robotic tool that takesenvelopes from high-speed insertersthat stuff them with coupons andcredit card statements and placesthem into trays for shipping. It alsouses robots to sort, stack and securesleeved mail trays onto pallets that arethen shipped out to mail distributioncenters.Optical sensors and other points of

data collection along the conveyor linescan mail from the time it’s printedto the time it goes onto a pallet. Thishelps CapStone prove its value topotential clients.In addition, the automated audit

technology gives clients the ability toargue its mail did, in fact, go where itwas supposed to.The U.S. Postal Service will begin

enforcing a new bar code system thisyear that will enable it to better trackthe accuracy of mass mailers like

First Data, whichreceive substantialdiscounts on individ-ual pieces of mail dueto volume.If a mail handler

mistakenly divert-ed envelopes to thewrong destination,the Postal Servicecould recover dis-counts retroactively.

Those costs add up quickly for even afraction of the millions of mail piecesgenerated by First Data each day, andthe automated audits can help combatpotentially inaccurate claims.Buglewicz said tenfold sales growth

in the next few years is a possibilityfor his company.“It’s literally impossible for humans

to keep up with some of these pro-cesses,” he said, referring both tothe volume and precision CapStonetechnology boasts.“The death of print mail is greatly

exaggerated,” Buglewicz said. “It’s notgoing away any time soon.”

Neither are the concerns that auto-mation and robots are contributing tothe obsolescence of jobs traditionallyheld by humans.Mail clerks and mail machine oper-

ators face a 94 percent probability ofautomation, and mail sorters, proces-sors and processing machine opera-tors face a 79 percent probability ofautomation, according to a September2013 study by Oxford University.At First Data, 18 laborers displaced

across three shifts by the AutoVirirobots were “redeployed” into the fa-cility’s sorting operations, the compa-ny said. The Atlanta-based processorof electronic payments such as debitand credit cards employs about 3,000in the Omaha metro area.Bill Novak, senior industrial engi-

neer at First Data, said automation“really is a necessity” as credit cardcompanies and other industry partnersrequire faster turnaround times forstatements.Novak said the CapStone robots,

which were installed in 2009, haveall but eliminated the risk of humanlaborers incurring repetitive motioninjuries in the sleeving section.Buglewicz said the return on invest-

ment for the AutoViri Sleever is about12 months.Hypothetically, Buglewicz said, Cap-

Stone’s systems “can take what was afour-day process with 500 employeesand make it into a four-hour process

with a handful of employees.”That’s including multiples of the

robotic solutions the company hasdeveloped.The replacement of human labor

isn’t something the company shiesaway from.“That’s the nature of our society,”

Buglewicz said.Automation has pushed other Oma-

ha jobs to obsolescence, as well.Meter readers, for example, face an

85 percent likelihood of being replacedby automation, according to the Ox-ford study, and eight years ago, OmahaPublic Power District had 45 full-timemeter readers.Today, it has five full-time and three

part-time meter readers, thanks to a2006 initiative to replace 330,000 elec-tric meters with automated equipmentthat automatically transmits energyusage information.The benefits, of course, are undeni-

able.OPPD officials said the utility now

averages less than one safety incidentper year among its meter readersand handles more than 90 percent ofcustomers’ high-bill complaints onthe phone, helping save money forcustomers.Elsewhere, local manufacturers

like the Ariens Co. plant in Auburn,about 70 miles south of Omaha, havedeployed robots to perform welds nextto human counterparts.

In Nebraska, the low unemploymentrate has encouraged manufacturingautomation.“We just aren’t producing a lot

of young people who want to workin manufacturing plants,” said BobBernier, director of the NebraskaBusiness Development Center at theUniversity of Nebraska at Omaha.Federal monetary policy also has

encouraged automation by keepinginterest rates low and allowing firmsto invest in increasingly affordableautomation technology rather than intraining and hiring hard-to-find humanlabor.Proponents of automation say new

technology also generates differentjobs. Increased output can lead to newsales positions and, as robotic technol-ogy becomes less expensive, higheradoption rates will require moreskilled engineers and service techni-cians to develop, run and troubleshootsystems.“Actually, the problem many

manufacturers have is they can’t findenough trained and educated person-nel to fill the advanced manufacturingjobs that robotics and automationcreates,” said Bob Doyle, a spokesmanfor the Association for AdvancingAutomation.“The real threat to jobs is when a

company is no longer competitive.”

Contact the writer:402-444-1534, cole.epley@owh.com

Robots:End-of-arm tools are key to success of CapStone— ‘that’s what we patent’Continued from Page 1 FORECASTING THE IMPACT OF ROBOTS

» A September 2013 study from theUniversity of Oxford analyzed more than700 jobs in the U.S. and assigned eacha number according to its probability ofautomation. Tax preparers, telemarketersand data entry employees were among12 occupations the study assigned a 99percent probability of automation. (Notably,the study relied on machine learning, aform of artificial intelligence, to computeits analysis.) Those results are likelyunsurprising to anyone who has recentlyfiled a tax return online or fielded a robocallfrom a politician. The study concluded thatabout 47 percent of total U.S. employmentis at “high risk” of obsolescence due toautomation. “We refer to these jobs at risk(as those) we expect could be automatedrelatively soon, perhaps over the nextdecade or two,” researchers wrote.»Martin Ford, an author and SiliconValley entrepreneur, forecast a nationalunemployment rate near 75 percent bythe end of the 21st century in his 2009book, “The Lights in the Tunnel.” Heargues that the obsolescence of humanlabor will decimate the economy sincepeople can be consumers only if they havejobs and income. “Most people think ofmanufacturing when they think of robots,but there aren’t that many manufacturingjobs left in the U.S. The really disruptivething is when robotics and softwareautomation moves more into the servicesector.” An example is a San Franciscocompany called Momentum Machinesthat is working on a robot that can cookand assemble 360 hamburgers an hour.The company’s “alpha machine” can slicefresh vegetables, the company brags, andit grinds fresh meat immediately beforecooking. “Think about what that couldmean for fast-food workers,” Ford said.» The International Federation of Robotics,based in Frankfurt, Germany, forecasts thecreation of 2 million to 3.5 million jobs inthe next eight years thanks to robots. TheFebruary 2013 study, “Positive Impact ofIndustrial Robots on Employment,” wasa follow-up to a study of the same titlepublished in 2011. Across the world, itfound robotics was responsible for directemployment of 4 million to 6 million peoplein manufacturing through 2011; includingindirect employment, that figure increasedby 4 million. Direct jobs often includeadditional sales and marketing jobs due toincreased productivity as well as high-skill,higher-wage positions for IT professionals,engineers and systems technicians.

BillNovak

These “fiesta” rubber duckies will be sold at theBerkshire shareholders meeting May 3. Charlie Mungeris on the left, Warren Buffett on the right.

J AME S R . B URNET T / THE WORLD -HERA LD

From left,CapStone’sFritzBuglewiczand RobbHagen andFirst DataengineerNavidRanjbari-Sisan watchthe robotsin action.Buglewiczsays tenfoldsales growthin the nextfew years isa possibilityfor hiscompany.