Cars, Clouds and IT Automation

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE

Automation has always been fascinating. From the days of the wheel, mankind has been looking for ways for machines to take over mundane everyday tasks. Over the years, technology has been used for the not-so-mundane tasks as well. We’ve come such a long way that entrepreneurs like Elon Musk refer toArtificial Intelligence as “summoning of the demon. I wouldn’t go so far, but I strongly believe that with the depth and sophistication of automation in the IT industry we have some interesting times are ahead of us.

A good example to draw parallels to is the auto industry. Manufacturing has evolved – from the days of assembly line production to breaking down of functions into simpler tasks that could be done in a repeated fashion. With evolving technology,these tasks were graduallyautomated and today, robots with laser eyes complete precision tasks like final stage assembly and mounting of windshields. In more advanced plants, there are over 500 robots involved in making a car.Perhaps this is the AI apocalypse that Muskis worried about.

But let’s look at this from another perspective. The same industry thought automation would make Japanese manufacturing and its quality of principles less formidable – or rather irrelevant. So, did Japanese manufacturing become irrelevant?  Automation stands for precision repeatability and, hence, assured quality. Some manufacturers predicted a lights out factory scenario where 100% robotic manufacturing provides the best quality output and no errors introduced by humans. While this did work in sub-assemblies, but what worked best was a holistic optimization or Lean principles across the entire value chain supported by robotic automation.

I draw great insights from this manufacturing industry maturity, and the potential co-existence of humans and robots. Today, robots are not just manufacturing cars, but are driving cars as well. That is definitely more complex than applying weld spots at measured intervals!

Isn’t it an irony that to build this AI code, some of the enterprise developers from these automotive companies had to wait for over eight weeks to get their environments set up? It’s probably because while cars were seen as standardized nut, bolts and panels, IT was seen as something customized and super-specialized, like the Rolls-Royce Phantom!

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