Jonathan Wright
INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION
Jonathan Wright
TITLE : GLOBAL HEAD , SUPPLY CHAIN FOR BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION SERVICES
COMPANY : IBM INDUSTRY : INFORMATION SERVICES
“ Companies that IBM calls ‘ automation achievers ’ get much better results by using IA for higher-order or ‘ expert ’ workflows ”
JONATHAN WRIGHT GLOBAL HEAD , SUPPLY CHAIN FOR BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION SERVICES , IBM
Recognised for his thought leadership and work in supply chain and operations , Jonathan Wright has spent his consulting career transforming global operations for large multinational corporations . His experience in digital strategies , analytics , customer service , supply chain and operations , procurement / cost reduction programmes , and order to cash spans numerous industry sectors , including retail , consumer products , telecommunications , travel , and healthcare .
Prior to joining IBM , Wright worked for EY , and spent 17 years with Accenture . He has consulted across many industries including aerospace , telco , hi-tech , healthcare , retail and consumer goods . Before life in professional services , Jonathan spent five years working for Exxon across multiple divisions . He describes himself as a strong supporter of equality in the workplace and in wider society .
forklifts hauling this trash to the compactor , but now these same robots handle it , freeing those people to do something more useful and less arduous . This particular organisation hadn ’ t considered that originally , but it was a simple case of doing a proof of concept , putting the robots in training mode , and the next thing you know , it ’ s doing that new task .”
Where does that leave us ? Not all , in fact very little , automation is concerned with a 1:1 replacement of the people in supply chain . “ It ’ s tempting to think that you can just install IA and walk away – but that ’ s not the case ,” says Wright . They are tools to remove the rote tasks from daily work routines and do the things robots simply do best : increasing accuracy , removing human error from big data crunching , and computational tasks that the human brain , for all its ingenuity and initiative , simply lacks the processing power to perform .
“ Companies that IBM calls ‘ automation achievers ’ get much better results by using IA for higher-order or ‘ expert ’ workflows – like handling massive numbers of complex customer inquiries simultaneously – rather than merely routine or mundane tasks ,” Wright
70 March 2021