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Do you ever worry that your job might be "offshoreable" in the future? If not, you should, there's a lot of "smart" people out there that are claiming it's the end-all-be-all cost-saving solution to every business process. If you have worried about it, I have the steps you need to make sure it never happens.
Jidoka is a Japanese word that translates to "Autonomation". It is used in the Toyota Production System (TPS) and Lean manufacturing techniques. It has been described as "intelligent automation" or "automation with a human touch." The concept of Jidoka is simple: Humans are flexible, they are good at adapting and making changes, but they are not very good at completing repetitive tasks. Machines (or computers) however, are not very flexible, but they do a very good job at completing repetitive tasks. Autonomation is about developing processes and systems that understand these key points and leverage human and machine resources accordingly.
This may trigger a "No duh." response. But one aspect of Lean manufacturing that we often do not implore, is the concept of Kaizen, or continuous improvement. That is, continually looking for opportunities to remove humans from completing repetitive tasks, and put them in positions of management and oversight where they can implement continuous improvement of the processes they are involved with.
Think about your life for a moment. How much of your day is spent completing repetitive tasks (on and off the job)? Whether it's plugging data into a spreadsheet for budget tracking, responding to the same type of email question/request over and over, or heck, even going to various websites to get your local, sports and social media news. How much time during your day do you spend doing the same thing, over and over?
On the personal level, there's a great book by Tim Ferris, "The 4 Hour Work Week", that offers some suggestions on how to Autonomate various aspects of your personal life. Some of them are far-fetched, but the concept is sound. Stop Wasting Time.
The same discipline can be applied to ALL of our jobs. We all have processes in place we're required to participate in as a part of doing our jobs. But how can we make those processes better? How can we remove ourselves and our colleagues from doing repetitive tasks and Autonomate them? Note, the word is not "Automate". We're not talking about replacing humans here, we're talking about increasing their efficiency and allowing them to focus on oversight and things that matter (continuous improvement), and not on the repetitive tasks.
Some people's answer to process improvement is by offshoring the task. Send it overseas to cheaper labor, and let them complete the repetitive tasks. This may seem to offer some cost savings in the short-term, but this often introduces other issues and inefficiencies, while still not addressing the core issue that humans (no matter where they live) are not very good at completing repetitive tasks. This is one of the major reasons there is so much attrition in offshore firms. Offshore employees are not going after more money somewhere else, the truth is, they get bored! Ultimately, the attrition you see requires more people that need to be trained, more offshore management and oversight needed to oversee new recruits, and the more the cost "savings" shrinks to the point that it negates the competitive advantage that was being explored. This result has been seen in offshoring everything from financial management, to call centers, to software development.
If you want to ensure your job doesn't get offshored, then you need to figure out ways to Autonomate your job. Figure out what aspects can be given to a machine. Let your stakeholders know that the more they can automate, the more responsibility you can take on, the more efficient you can be. You can get out of the role of being an "operator" and into the role of a true "knowledge worker", a differentiator, a competitive advantage.
Before you ever ask yourself the question, "Is my job offshoreable?", ask yourself the question, "Can the processes I'm a part of be Autonomated (Jidoka)?". I guarantee that if you're continuously doing the latter (Kaizen), the former will never be a question.
-J
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3 comments:
Good article J. I find it interesting how people have a tendency to continue performing repetitive tasks yet only a small fraction of these people look for ways to automate and improve them.
Unfortunately a lot of individuals tie automation to job loss which keeps many folks doing the same thing every day when their skill set can be utilized in other aspects of an organization. Another pitfall I've noticed is that some individuals cannot articulate how automating their repetitive task can add value to the organization. Often times these "ideas" are the first to get knocked off the list.
Looking forward to hearing more about this. And by the way, great new additions to your blog...I want cool gadgets on mine too!
The process junkie in me is applauding this post! Most of the client work I do centers on implementing tools to "automate" business processes. The question we continually re-center on is: what should be automated (let the technology do it) and what SHOULD remain a human activity. The only way to effectively answer this is to fully understand what the business process is and what are the roles and responsibilities that exist. Every technology implementation needs to be based on solid understanding of the business process it suppports. To do this one must:
1. Define the process steps
2. Define the roles that are responsible for each step
3. Identify the business rules that must exist. i.e. "A" must be true for "B" to occur.
4. Determine which business rules can be programmed into a technology to execute and which require a human's thought process.
The end result: defined business process, well understood roles and responsibilities, and defined system requirements for a technology to automate.
I’d note the people of to informer that too!
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