TURNING AUTOMATION INVESTMENT INTO OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE Prological’s Peter Jones shares the key parameters and considerations for businesses looking to automate logistics and supply chain operations.
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hile automation has played a role in supply chains for some time, the technology is more accessible and affordable than ever before. Shifting consumer habits have forced many businesses’ hand – a higher level of urgency in e-commerce retail has lent itself to the adoption of lower price point technology especially, such as Automated Mobile Robots (AMRs). A recent report by research and consulting firm Gartner highlighted ‘hyper-automation’ as its top trend of last year. The combination of technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation are being used in place of human judgement, with businesses delegating more and more authority of decision making to intelligent applications. Peter Jones, Managing Director of Prological, says lessons can be learnt from the mistakes made by some early adopters of automation. “When we start to explore what went wrong, it’s never the automation which doesn’t work,” he says. “It’s always that a business didn’t fully understand what they actually needed when they started out on their journey, so they didn’t end up with what was best for the task at hand.” In order to prepare for a change to automation, Peter says it’s crucial to not skip the groundwork on fully understanding the requirements of a business for the present and future. This includes a factor which is often
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In order to prepare for a change to automation, Peter says it’s crucial to not skip the groundwork on fully understanding the requirements of a business for the present and future. This includes a factor which is often overlooked: adapting the culture of an organisation to fit automated operations.
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overlooked: adapting the culture of an organisation to fit automated operations. Working with computers and intelligent software means many old business disciplines will become redundant. When an entire warehouse becomes more IT-heavy, automating the issuing and control of orders and inventory and the operational and functional tasks, the staff need to reflect this change. “The skills and type of people required for a manual picking environment or more traditional environment is very different to the optimum employees in an automated warehouse environment,” Peter adds. “There’s a lot more people
interaction in a traditional warehouse, so for people who need that human interaction to maintain high productivity rates, an automation environment is going to be more difficult. People who are happy to spend a day with themselves and work at high cadence, doing reasonably repetitive tasks will thrive.” Peter believes there’s a greater pool of workers for automated environment than a high productivity, manual environment, but businesses moving to automation need to embed the mindset into operations while preparing for the changes in tasks for those transitions, and for the changes in personnel for those who find the transition too challenging.
ACCESSING THE RIGHT DATA When dealing with advanced technology, data should be robust, accurate and easily accessible. Sometimes having access to mountains of data means the numbers contain errors and inaccuracies. Another problem faced is the amount of time and resources being consumed in collating and reporting data all the while failing to convert this data into the information required for evidence-based decision making and tangible actions. “So you’ve got to have that product information, master data file, really tight and accurate before you start and there’s time efficient and cost efficient ways of doing that,” says Peter. Data on every Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) must be correct, that means the history, sales, forecast, and dimensional MHD JUNE 2022 | 49
