Just as was the case when robotics first became prevalent in manufacturing, the fear of being replaced and left redundant is with us again as we marvel at the power of AI.
At the core of most businesses lies technology, facilitating communication and processes or advancing innovation. At TFC Europe, a global provider of supply chain and inventory solutions for manufacturing, amidst the application of technology, there remains a celebration of real people and the quantitative difference that results from the human touch. Will that ever be totally replaced or is it more important than ever before, to ensure technology is applied successfully?
Evolved over millions of years, human intelligence has placed us at the top of the food chain in more ways than one. Constructive, dynamic, creative, not to mention our destructive capacity, which gets ever more creative. In recent decades, even centuries, human ingenuity has been applied to building more, building bigger and building faster. We have applied our skills to the development of technology to further our advance, but in the process to make it easier and faster for us to achieve more.
As is the case in all aspects of life, being the best and being the first is something drilled into us from an early age and stems from a primeval instinct that favours survival of the fittest. When we wake every morning now though, whilst, sadly, many people in the world still face a fight for survival, for many of us it is more often a fight for success. To be the first, to be the best.
Technology has provided a platform to make success far more accessible. In doing so, however, it has also allowed competition to grow exponentially, enabling 8 billion humans to interact, communicate, trade and compete…with relative ease. The need to stay ahead of your competition has not only become a vast global game, including the challenge of trying to identify who the competition might be; but by consequence has driven an exponential rise in the use of technology to continuously create a competitive edge.
The advent of automation and robotics in the mid to late 20th century created a step change in the ability to mass produce high quality products and distribute them globally to meet growing demands of industrious populations. At the time of its inception, mature industrial countries looked to achieve two things – adopt automation to stave off the rising cost of human workers as living standards and expectations grew; and outsource to other emerging industrious regions where the human cost was substantially lower. With an ultimate goal of increasing profits, it was a short-term strategy, driven by the need to fulfil rising consumer demand and the relentless goal of producing more for less.
This age of automation is now mature. At the outset, engineers were being taught how to design for manufacture and design for productivity. Today, if design is not done with automation in mind, it risks exposing innovations to high cost manufacture and losing out to low cost labour markets, ultimately failing to successfully launch innovative products on the world stage.
One quarter of the way into the 21st century, the growth of Artificial Intelligence provides tremendous opportunity to capture globally competitive advantages. The speed at which AI is becoming mainstream is astonishing. Yet many do not even know what it really is, which makes it tacitly uncomfortable. Fear of the unknown is an all too familiar obstacle, which if not overcome can risk preventing growth or at worst propagating failure.
The arrival of robotics was similar, but much easier to understand. It could be seen. Hence the fear was more acute, with doomsday scenarios predicted that would see the demise of humans, relinquishing control of our planet to the robots!
As Artificial Intelligence has rapidly come into our lives, we often don’t even realise it’s there, observing, measuring, analysing and predicting our next moves. All for positive purposes, for now, and we have to be careful to apply it correctly and appropriately. The images contained in this article, for example, were generated with the assistance of AI, but only suitable after a careful human touch from the TFC editing team.
The benefits are many: Analysing behaviours faster than the human mind can think; Gaining insights into customers’ needs; Generating new designs and ideas without needing to navigate complex software programs; Accelerating the design, development, manufacture and marketing of manufacturing solutions in a fraction of the time it took just a few years ago.
But does it work without the intelligence of humans? Even with the advances in automation, none of it would have been effective without the creative and adaptive mind of people and the practical ability to implement physical actions. What you get out of artificial intelligence is still very much dependent on what you put in and how you interpret its outputs.
Observation and interpretation are some of our most powerful human assets and the application of critical thinking is what enables technological advance. Can this human behaviour ever be fully replaced? We have seen various attempts to reduce human involvement as costs escalate and people demand more reward for their efforts. Technology has been used to offset this, and not always with positive or progressive results.
The customer service call-centre is a great example of how evolution in technology enabled people to be displaced (or initially moved), taking advantage of cost disparities around the world. The pursuit of saving costs was enabled by technology, but with scant regard for quality. First, outsourcing to real people who simply cost less, made possible by advances in communications technology which removed the obstacle of physical distance. But ill equipped and ill informed to actually provide an effective service, technology was only facilitating one part of the process.
The ongoing evolution seems to place humans at the core of the problem, rather than at the core of the solution. With a move to replace people altogether, it is perhaps thought that the ineffective customer care operators are successfully removed. When one observes this macro environment, it is easy to see how we so easily make the wrong decisions in a false belief of technological advancement.
Overlaying technology onto a fundamentally failing model will simply accelerate the failure. That is not without its advantages, speed up failure exponentially and we can hopefully see the need for correction before it’s too late. Sounds risky? I’d say so. A potential inward spiral of self destruction!
As AI is watching us, learning, adapting, calculating…who’s watching ‘it’? Although this phrase may provoke thoughts of the destruction of human civilisation, it isn’t meant like that. What I mean is, who is helping AI to understand us? Who’s watching the calculations, assisting with iterative adjustments and remembering to always focus on quality? Where do the subtleties of human behaviour play their part, adapting to changing needs and evolving external influences?
Human interaction is valuable beyond measure and should not be lost in the race to automate.
In the world of manufacturing, challenges present themselves on a daily basis. There is a need to create repeatable process but with flexibility to react to changing demand, changing needs and changing influences.
The production shop floor should therefore be a dynamic environment. Enabling change and flexibility within a framework of control. This is where human agility still plays a valuable role and needs to blend seamlessly with technology and AI. Many manufacturing processes remain manual or at least require human intervention, not least to ensure instantaneous correction and iterative improvement.
When considering capacity, output and productivity, customer demand is one of the main and changeable influences on day to day production management. The task of aligning materials supply to this environment is not for the faint-hearted.
Many manufacturing business use a precise bill of materials to define exactly what is needed to construct a final product. Without this, any strive towards volume production could quickly result in chaos and disaster. Combined with the forecast demand for the end product and an accurate understanding of the manufacturing build process, a precise timing of material requirement can be created. And then comes the daunting variety of supply options available globally, providing access to high quality manufactured components at competitive pricing with strong and robust sustainable supply routes.
Sometimes the difference between the “here and now” and where we want to get to can be confused. Distractions of managing today will often hold us back from creating a better tomorrow. It is important to free up time to focus on tomorrow and accessing professional services can do exactly that, especially in the world of supply chain management.
The integration of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) does this. Since its inception - facilitating productivity in high volume, repeatable manufacturing - VMI has proven to be a valuable component of the supply chain management process. It frees time that would otherwise be buried in the mire of iterative adjustments to supply. Time that can be better spent focusing on the adoption of technology to advance competitiveness and accelerate success.
TFC Europe has been managing VMI systems for manufacturers in the UK and Europe for many years. The immediate benefits are very real and tangible: reduced admin, lower cash-burdensome inventory, reduced production downtime, and more time to focus on other things.
TFC began as a supplier of fasteners to manufacturers in the UK during the 1960s, at a time when today’s technology was confined to the fascinations of science fiction. Today it is part of a global organisation, AFC Industries, that focuses on delivering supplier management to multiple and global manufacturing industries. Managing and facilitating materials and component supply through a combination of inventory management systems and global sourcing from a vast network of manufacturing partners.
VMI is not a new concept and has a proven track record of delivering great value for manufacturing businesses. But its success has at times been lost in the strive for systemisation and automation. There remains a strong need for human interface with a VMI system and this is what TFC places as one of its core value propositions – its people.
This human interface still plays a critical role in adapting to fast pace change, observing, problem solving and communicating, with all stakeholders and at both ends of the supply chain. Blended with technology and increasingly taking advantage of AI tools, the human touch is what really makes a difference to the people who are striving to manufacture more, faster and better.
At TFC, the philosophy is attention to customers and simplicity. The AFC Industries group mantra is SIMPLE. Making customers’ lives easier by taking a logical approach to problem solving. Under the surface, far from being simple, the systems, networks and logistics that facilitate a successful VMI are complex. To their customers, though, the benefits are realised, problems eliminated and life made simple.
The result: More time to focus on improving your manufacturing business. More time to innovate designs and refine production processes. More time to embrace technology, including Artificial Intelligence, and use it to accelerate success.
