Is RPA The Future Of Manufacturing?

RPA and Technology are advancing at an incredible pace. Nearly every day, we witness a different face of digital domination. From integrating robots to connecting devices, commuting in driverless cabs to ordering food online, the world is now on the cusp of disruption and sooner would we find, machines taking over the human workforce.

Yes, that’s right.

What we mean to say here is, automating mundane, day to day repetitive task to cut down on the time taken and the cost incurred to perform those via manual labour. To be precise, we are talking about RPA or Robotic Process Automation.

According to research by Statista, the global automation market is worth nearly $179 billion. Meaning that there lies tremendous scope in the arena of the automation industry. The technology is growing and the growth is only expected to rise further.

Considering the events occurring in the manufacturing industry, implementing robotic process automation would revolutionize the entire infrastructure of the industry and all that would change, would be for the good. Having said that, it would be worth giving a thought on the potential of RPA to replace human jobs, taking over most of the basic task and that to, with greater efficiency.

So, would it be justified to state that RPA is the future of manufacturing?

Well, that’s our topic of discussion here and we would get back to this, once we have walked down all that the technology has in store for the manufacturing industry.

RPA – The Machine Driven Workforce

So, what is RPA? Where some just name it as technological disruption, others dive deep into the definition tagging it to be the integration of robots in everyday tasks.

These robots have programmed software which has been tailored to perform specific yet repetitive tasks. These have been designed in such a way that they can organize any data part of the business operation. What turns these robots or rather machines adept in all they do is the fact that prior to their implementation they are technically trained.

Now when we say that tasks are automated using RPA, we mean that they need to assess, analyze and then segment operations to enhance productivity. What exactly an RPA does is reduce the need of manual workforce to perform tasks that are back end or remote and does nothing but consume time. Whether it is the end-user service, customer engagement, inventory management or supply chain directives, RPA strives to optimize each task and integrate it seamlessly while narrowing down the time needed to do the same task via manual labour. Multilevel features are adopted to streamline the task and accelerate the time to market the product.

Enticing right? So this was all about the past and present narratives of RPA, what about its future?

Future Prospects Of Robotic Process Automation

Ranging between data entry to data keying, managing stocks to auto ordering goods, solving customer issues to handling the adverse environment, RPA has its wings all over the manufacturing sector. And the future scope seems to be eye-opening. Presence of tools and technologies that tend to optimize everyday tasks aids the popularity of RPA. Data formatting, data assembling, collection, and data analysis are few of the tasks that can be automated via RPA. Further, it is seen that in the near future the technology would witness tremendous growth considering that the task done by robots would be highly efficient and free from error. Humans, on one hand, can often render incorrect reports, however, robots would have been trained to perform the task, hence are accurate and provide precise results.

Needless to state that the technology is on an exponential rise and all of this could be attributed to the aspects:

• Robots are highly efficient: Considering that machines can function 24/7 without break, the efficiency of robot’s is extremely high as compared to humans.
• Robots render accurate results: Robots that replace humans in performing mundane, repetitive task have been intrinsically trained to perform the same and so the possibility of them making mistakes is least. On the contrary, humans are more prone to errors and can reduce accuracy.
• Cost Reduction: Robots might appear to be expensive at the initial stages, however, in the long run, they tend to be cost-effective. This is in the sense that they can perform tasks faster and efficiently, thereby reducing the total time and likewise the cost of business operation
• Change Management: Since robots reserve the integrity and authenticity of data, they can effectively indulge in changing the management.
• Better Logs: Lastly, the audit reports as generated by robots comply with industrial standards. It further enables taking an efficient data-driven decision.

Having said all of the above, it would not surprise you if we see RPA be the future of the manufacturing industry. Integration of RPA in the manufacturing industry is proven to deliver flawless results and given the above, who would not want to leverage their business efficiency?

Would you?