INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION
adds . “ You need the proper training – either internally or through a third-party provider like IBM – to give employees the agility and flexibility needed to work with automated workflows , skills that will ultimately help them work smarter .”
To this end , as supply chains ‘ outsource ’ more of their processes to IA technology , organisations will need to reshape themselves to fit the new mould . Klappich draws an analogue to the evolving role of IT over the past three decades .
What we believe will happen over the next few years is a new organisation is going to emerge under the auspices of what we ’ re referring to as Chief Robotics Officer . The role is going to be much like how IT has evolved over the last 30 years . Inthe 80s- 90s , IT was bottom-up , but we believe as this proliferates there are going to be more opportunities for a CRO .
“ Look at it as a three-leg stool : the skill sets this executive will need are IT skills , business skills , and engineering skills - the perfect employee being someone with strengths in all three . That ’ s probably unrealistic to find that uber-person , so we envision a zig-zag career path where someone might join the company in engineering , but are encouraged to move upwards and sideways through the organisation , honing and picking up new skills in IT and business .
The founder of a robot company I was speaking to recently told me that if a company has a Robot Engineer on staff , that ’ s not necessarily a great thing . What is really needed is a person who knows how to solve business problems using the robots - those are not synonymous skills . That ’ s that threelegged stool , getting three systems to talk to one another through automation . Otherwise , being frank , no amount of automation and technology is going to move the needle .”
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