To solve the conundrum of diminishing productivity with Technology

Introduction

From the dawn of the twenty-first century, work has become more interesting across various sectors and industries. In most cases, the contribution towards the excitement and exuberance came from technology. For example, at the beginning of the century, digitization took the next leap towards digitalization, and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software came to the forefront. Companies like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft enjoyed huge success thanks to the high adoption rates of their respective ERP solutions. From recruitment to retirement, from receiving the order to realizing the payment, from procurement to making payment to an invoice, transparent reporting – the reason for the wide adoption of ERP had been the aim to achieve more and more efficiency and less human error. More work could be done with less manpower and at a pace hitherto unachieved. Other technologies like business intelligence (BI) came around the same time and successfully leveraged the ERP wave.

Towards the end of the twenty-first-century first decade, the need for good infrastructure at a lower cost emerged. The server cost, network cost, and the cost of manpower to maintain such infrastructure made IT developments a reality only for a fraction of the companies. The wave of SaaS (Software as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) came to resolve the impasse. Around the middle of the second decade of the century, we witnessed the terms like SMAC (social-mobile-analytics-cloud), which empowered organizations to collect and store a high volume of data and armed them with the firepower of high computational capabilities. The pathway of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science was paved. We witnessed the glory of AI-ML-DL (Artificial Intelligence-Machine Learning-Deep Learning), Industry 4.0 and many other exponential technologies. All these transformed the way various functions work across different industries, and aluminium is no different.

With all these in the backdrop, a startling fact was revealed – the productivity of the human workforce has decreased over the last century. Even with all the gadgets like smartphones, wearables, and laptops which were practically non-existent a few decades back, the overall productivity of the human workforce has diminished. Now that is a conundrum! With the increased technical know-how, smart devices, better IT -infrastructure, and connections anywhere with Apps – we are supposed to get more done in lesser time. But the reality is just the opposite! This concern has found a place in the Future of Work Trends 2022 report by Korn Ferry, a globally reputed organizational consulting firm. The World Economic Forum has also mentioned this problem a number of times in various deliberations and reports.

Reasons behind diminishing productivity

While this is a quagmire, the reasons are relatively easy to find out. A few such factors are mentioned below:

1. Impact of the recent technological advancements: It is widely concluded that the development of Industry 4.0, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), or Artificial Intelligence (AI) are path-breaking. Still, their impact on human productivity or life has been minimal compared to the steam engine or electricity innovation. All the recent developments have considerable potential, but the use cases are yet to be established for many of them.
2. Complications at work: With continuous technology leap-frogging, human workers today are continuously moving across different platforms and technology suites. For example, the sales team uses different platforms or at least applications for keeping a tab on the sales pipeline, managing the single version of documents, discussing the live proposals and booking orders and then for order fulfilment.

Today we have more number of companies than a few decades back. Multiple geographies mean multiple regulatory guidelines, laws to abide by, and more work. The complicated work environment demands more time to learn, unlearn and relearn. The cycles are more rapid, resulting in a loss of productivity.

3. Increasing interruptions: Multiple environments and devices inevitably result in more alerts, demand more attention and result in poor attention span for a particular type of work. It is a proven fact that once we are interrupted in any work, it takes around 22-27 minutes to regain the same level of concentration.
4. Overall economic slow-downs & geo-political tensions: The workforce today is operating in an increasingly VUCA environment (Volatile-Uncertain-Complex-Ambiguous). The geopolitical tensions, the threat emerging from the scarcity of resources, the increasing carbon footprints and its adverse impact on the environment, the pressure from the regulatory bodies, and the compliance requirements – all these together are also impacting the working condition and the effectiveness and efficiency of the workforce.

The solution

The problems stated above are applicable to any sector, and Aluminium is no exception. The adoption of new technologies is increasing in the aluminium sector. The requirement for Green Aluminium is the need of the hour, and globally, consumers are increasingly demanding the same. However, the different players in the Aluminium ecosystem are in different states of adoption or usage of technology. Despite the same, the aluminium players may explore a few solutions depending on the requirement and applicability. The impact on productivity will also vary accordingly. One size will not fit all of them.

1. Robotic Process Automation: Any organization has a number of routine activities – working on the MIS, filling data tables inside ERP, creating a sales order, purchase order, invoices, and the like. Often such works are non-cerebral, mundane and manual labour intensive. This is the area where RPA or Robotic Process Automation comes in. These are set of programs which may be trained to perform a set of activities very fast and without any error. Often these need to be triggered manually, and sometimes such processes may be triggered in an automated way as well. The RPA is known as Attended or Unattended, respectively.

2. Industry 4.0: Industry 4.0 has an excellent potential to improve productivity. Successfully deployed Industry 4.0 projects to reduce unplanned breakdowns and achieve predictive maintenance. Similarly, energy reduction, production bottleneck prediction, etc., are a few other important use cases of Industry 4.0. However, like any other significant technical projects, Industry 4.0 projects take time to be conceived, planned and executed. The benefits get registered only after the projects are used as a part of the regular work. This entire journey takes time, but it adds to the efficiency once implemented.

3. Integrated platform for multiple applications: These days’ organizations often get confused about using multiple platforms for multiple purposes. For example, CRM, ERP, production management systems, HRMS, Reporting systems, and many more. Sometimes managing all these becomes a big challenge for the middle management and the leadership teams. Hence many companies have started the practice of integrated platforms and unified interfaces. Unified platforms often make hovering across different systems relatively easy and increase the efficiency and morale of the workforce.

4. Increasing adoption of ERPs: Many Aluminium companies are increasingly adopting ERP. For obvious reasons, the bigger players and smelting plants or mining and equipment companies have higher adoption rates. Many of them have probably moved to the next level of business reporting and analytics. Still, the smaller counterparts and extrusion companies are yet to catch up. ERPs, once successfully implemented, make work easier and can increase efficiency.

5. AI & ML solutions: Successfully implemented AI models aid in decision-making and enabled organizations to become more effective and efficient at the same time. However, many Aluminium companies are still in the early experimentation stage with AI models.

6. Digital detoxication: Technology has become part and parcel of our life, but we should be enslaved by it. Continuous interruptions hamper the ability to concentrate. These days, organisations have started taking measures like ‘no mobile in team meetings, ‘no phone hour’, etc. Such practices will only increase in the days to come.

It is obvious that the solutions mentioned above are just some of the ones. The organizations are also trying to deploy many other technical, managerial and behavioural techniques to enhance the workforce's productivity, machines and other resources.

Conclusion

The VUCA world is here. The business environment will keep on getting more complicated. The demand of the stakeholders will keep changing. The technology leapfrogging will continue for decades to come. Hence, productivity, as we know, will continue to remain under pressure. However, a pragmatic framework to understand which changes to embrace and which not and then a well-thought-out implementation of a selected technology will certainly enhance the productivity of the organizations. This requires specific skillsets which may not be available within the existing teams. Realizing the same, several global aluminium companies have created the position of ‘CDO’ (Chief Digital Officer) or ‘Head of Digital Transformation over the last few years. That is a step towards the right direction. We at AlCircle, will keep an eye on those developments and keep our readers posted.