Sustainable Automation Journey

TRANSFORM by working alongside robots. Robots are mostly known from the media. In movies, they often have weapons and work for the evil (e.g. ‘i, Robot’ with Will Smith). With educating on what robots really are, how they work - people will get more interested in shaping the change instead of blocking it. The motivation behind this principle is to reduce fears and encourage curiosity as well as acceptance.

Starting with: The starting point is to try around experimenting with a mobile robot. This can be done after you found the suitable task for automation (TRANSFORM principle: Identifying unhealthy tasks). Involving your employees in the process, keeping them updated and considering their feedback is the most important step to make them feel comfortable (allowing space for experimentation).

Measures & Initiatives: Plan some experiments and on-site tests with robots. Also, plan budget and time resources from people involved. Setup a transformation team (or project team) with responsibilities. A popular initiative that we experienced in the field was that employees gave nicknames to the robot, which helped them talk about the robot itself and increase the acceptance of the new colleague. Give introduction about the new technology and reserve time for all employees to understand what the robot can and what it can not do.

Feedback on progress: With transparent communication, you will also get valuable feedback on how the experiment went. From this point, possible improvements as well as next steps can be identified.