Transitioning to Knowledge-Based Playbooks & A.I.
By Kalle Kilpi, Founder, Products & BD for Midaxo
Everyone is talking about how A.I. is taking over knowledge-based work and rendering professionals like lawyers or even M&A experts redundant. What everyone seems to be forgetting is the evolution of manufacturing work required - from project to line production - to revolutionize productivity and ultimately enable robots to take over some tasks from humans.
Critical inventions of past industrial revolutions are work process standardization and the conveyer belt, which came before robotics started to really gain ground in factories.
Work process standardization changed overall creative work to a sequential set of simpler standardized tasks. Suddenly even less skilled workers or robots could carry out tasks, while quality was improved at the same time.
The conveyor belt made it practical to transition in-progress products from one person to another, and one step in the sequence to the next without too much overhead. It also enabled each worker to stay put at their station and not waste time moving around. Let’s look deeper into process standardization.