Creatively Applying Robots to Business Process Optimization
As robots and artificial intelligence improve, business owners who are looking to stay a step ahead are considering the question: how do these machines add business value?
Robots are the physical manifestation of digital automation. Over the last four decades, computers have enabled automation of information. For instance, professional service businesses no longer reference text books for expert information, they reference the internet. Design service businesses no longer draft on paper, they use computer aided design software.
Now, robots and artificial intelligence have enabled a new frontier for automation of tasks in the physical world. Capitalizing on the new potential that automation machines can bring to a business depends on an understanding of automation, and creatively evaluating business processes for new opportunities.
What does it mean to “automate”?
To automate a task means to have the task routinely and accurately handled by a machine. A task that is ideally automated requires no human interaction and no human effort to be completed successfully.
Automation provides business value by reducing the labor and material resources necessary to complete a task. Machines accomplish this in a few different ways:
Speed: Machines can repetitively repeat the same task at high speed
Accuracy: Machines can complete a task with far fewer mistakes
Fidelity: Machines can complete a task with better precision and exacting execution.
Traditionally, automation requires a larger up-front investment in technology. The return on investment is realized through reduced labor and material costs over time. One example of this is a car manufacturing line. At the advent of the car, the manufacturing line was entirely human, with every person performing a very specific task. Now, over a century later, robots can automate many of those same tasks with better efficiency, and that efficiency reduces manufacturing costs.
Automation technologies include robots, artificial intelligence, and computers.
Where Businesses can Best Automate
Robots bring the best value to simple and repeatable tasks. Businesses can maximize this trend by evaluating their current processes for the following characteristics:
Monotonous tasks that need to scale
Seek monotonous tasks that continue to expand in scope as a business scales. Robots are excellent repetition machines. Robots excel at bringing value to these types of tasks because they can readily scale with demand, and often scale rapidly with the addition of new machines or improvements in processing.
Silly mistakes that cause slow-downs
Simple tasks are, ironically, most prone to human error. Consider sorting packages. There is significant human energy that goes into reading and interpreting a label, then quickly acting on the information that the label provides, creating multiple potential failure points in the process. Robots, on the other hand, can interpret and execute fact based decisions nearly instantaneously, with far less chance of a mistake.
Simple tasks that cause distractions
Is there a task in your business that people must necessarily commit to every day, but that does not bring direct value to your product or services? Consider tasks distracting your people from their professional work. For instance, an IT worker needing to physically reset switches on a control board every week, an administrator locking up the business space each day, or a waiter running plates back and forth from the kitchen. Each of these is an example of a simple task that distracts the employee from their core-value task. Robots can improve these processes through automated monitoring of a space, manipulation of physical switches and locks, and reliable delivery of goods across a business floor.
Understanding the Limits of Automation
Automation is not equally capable or valuable for all tasks. For any organization’s goals, some things are necessarily optimized in the domain of real people, or excel as collaborations with human and machine. Consider the following:
Creative Invention
The unique value of a business, whether through brand, product, or service experience, is formed through creative invention. Robots are not good replacements for generating creative invention, though they can be valuable to enhance human creativity.
Creativity is present in physical processes. The way a human technician completes a delicate manufacturing process might be part of the organization's creative and unique service experience.
Robots can enhance these physical processes not by replacing the human, but by offering collaborative support.
Human Interaction
In service experiences, customers value human interaction over machines. Clients and industry peers demand human to human communication to build trust.
While not great human substitutes for these situations, machines can be helpful aides for communication. For instance, robots can be available as stand by "Frequently-Asked-Question" machines to provide simple, fact based answers on products and services.
The Value of Automation
Robots and automation machines bring value by eliminating the distracting, optimizing the simple, and accelerating the repeatable. Machines are not as well suited for emotional, communication, or creative tasks, but might be considered as human-aides for these domains. By thinking creatively about the company's daily processes, and understanding both the limits and potential of robotics, business leaders can uncover new value and efficiency in their operations.
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