Semi – Automation … The New Approach
Back in the days when skilled labor were in scarce, many countries adapted to automation… so that most part of day-to-day job can be done automatically with limited human interference.
Though I am against a complete (full) automation, because I always believe in a personal touch in your job. otherwise what if these automated tools develop an AI (artificial intelligence) and take over our world!!…just like what happen to skynet and we all will be john conner walking around killing robots!!. Therefore I prefer the semi-automation approach.
But as day passes by in my current job I have seen that semi automation is needed and make your life much easier and “human” error free. Sure its easy to make a semi automated system to be fully automated. But then this makes me think, what i am there for ?
Full Automation VS Semi-Automation
But i am not fully against a full automation, where I cannot employ a human interference.
Some of the areas where I have applied semi automation is
Everyday checking & making sure our ecommerce stores prices are matching with the in-house inventory system. Here I use tools at scheduled timing to run application and run price comparison and presents to me a report of any price difference. Now every day I can view how each ecommerce sites perform and I can be up to date with the sites pricing.
Another approach is where we use barcode scanners for invoice picking and towards the end of the day I have multiple time stamped text files, which needs to be formatted into files readable by another system. Basically formatting of files, renaming of files and deletion of files are done by the end of the process. Then the next system picking up these files and updating and presenting a report for operations manager to view what has been done. And make sure he does a second review on these steps.
Places where full automation applied are at midnight when our terminals are initiated to contact the server for updates and maintenance. An automated script is installed which logout the current user if he/she isn’t logged out and login as another use who can perform maintenance and patch installations. And towards the end of all these, systems logout themselves and restart for user login
Its beautiful to see these automation works…almost makes you think…this is the next step to the future