In 2018, automation feels like it’s everywhere in business. From Amazon’s warehouses to Tesla’s factories, multi-billion dollar companies are using automation to reduce costs, improve quality, and keep up their strategic edge against the competition. The hardware and software in automation continues to improve, and this technology can achieve everything from vacuuming floors, to sending email ads for new sales, to answering phones, to even driving our cars.
Even a relatively small business owner cannot afford to ignore automation! Why is that? Because automation offers the potential of the same advantages that it offers to a big business: lower costs, more consistent quality, faster customer service, saving time for managers and owners to work on more important tasks.
But: automation sometimes sucks for businesses. Sometimes, if implemented without thinking, or “too much, too fast,” it hurts more than it helps! Automation for its own sake is silly: automation is useful when it achieves goals for the business, and useless when it does not.
Why is this? How can automation software and robots hurt the business using them?
There are multiple reasons.
First, you have consider that investing in automation costs money in the first place. Whether that’s installing robotic welder arms on a factory floor, or investing in a CRM system that includes automated marketing to clients, you’re paying something upfront. If the amount of money the automation saves turns out to be very tiny, such that it takes many years to cover the cost of the investment, then that money spent on automation could have been better spent elsewhere for the business. If the process to be automated is rarely used, this can often be the case.
Second, the automation could simply be implemented badly. An automation process that was sold to the business owner as sensible and profitable on paper, may not work as advertised. This can happen if the “experts” responsible for implementing the automation rush it haphazardly, and cause the automation system to lead to extra costly errors and delays once started.
Third, sometimes the current level of automation technology isn’t good enough for a particular business task. Some processes are still so complex, that a human can do them better than a machine. The great entrepreneur, Mars enthusiast and technologist Elon Musk found this problem this year in one of his Tesla automotive factories. Musk rushed his company into automating the production of the new Model 3 electric sedan as much as possible, in an effort to boost output. However, this turned out to cause more bottlenecks that slowed, rather than sped up, the production line. Conveyor belts broke down, and robotic arms proved less than reliable at ensuring snug fits of nuts and bolts. In this latter problem; whereas a human worker will tighten all of a car’s parts at his station as tightly as necessary based on his perception, the automatic machines at Tesla were calibrated to tighten down to the same specs each time, even though the pieces of the cars were not completely consistent in how they fit together. This led to defects in the Model 3s, including unnecessary rattling and creaking during driving.
When Musk removed much of the automation and reverted back to human workers for more of the auto production line, this helped the company finally reach its weekly production targets.
What can you learn from all this?
The lesson is not that automation is the devil, and that robots should be shunned.
Far from it! Automation more often than not, when implemented wisely for the specific company, helps to reduce costs, speed things up, boost production, and improve relations with customers.
The lesson is that it’s critical to learn about the automation options applicable to your business, and to consult your own business’ strengths and weaknesses, plus the advice of an expert, to determine where and how the right amount and pace of automation can bring the biggest benefit to your company.
Avoiding technology like a Luddie is foolish.
So is rushing full-blow into automating everything without consideration.
The correct amount of automation is somewhere in the middle, and that “somewhere” varies business to business.
Think about your own company, or the company you work for: where do you think automation can help, especially with frequent, important, and repetitive tasks? Where, in usually more complex and rare tasks, does human labor make more sense?
