On the day the Scientific Council for
Government Policy (WRR) released a report on robotisation, I heard in the
car on Radio 1 a debate on the subject. The topic was introduced with
an audio clip in which a man - probably from a trade union - talked
about the 'robot voice' that tells employees at Albert Heijn's distribution centres
through headphones telling them what to do. In the same clip,
the man that employees feel rushed because everyone wants to reach the
100-percent norm. This tempted the presenter to use the robotic voice
and the 'hunt standard' together and to speak of a robot
hunting down people. Even before the debate started, I was annoyed
at the tone of it.
First of all, it obviously takes it too far to describe voicepicking
one as an outgrowth of robotisation. The order pickers at Albert
Heijn have always received instructions on picking locations and numbers, only
they used to receive them on paper or via the screen of a handheld terminal.
Now that this is done through a headset, it suddenly sounds a lot scarier. Undoubtedly
not everyone is keen on this technology, like the one wholesaler who
dispensed with voice picking so as not to deprive its on-call workers - mainly housewives - of the
opportunity to have a chat with each other. However, I am
pretty sure that large groups of people don't mind getting their
orders being whispered in.
What the audio clip also failed to address were
the additional benefits that voice picking has for the order pickers themselves. Think
of the improvement in ergonomics because order pickers have their hands free and
do not first have to put away their terminal or their picking list to pick an item
item. At Logistica, the concept was presented once again
where order pickers receive stacking instructions. Indeed, order pickers then
then have to think even less. But look how often they have to re-stack their pallets or
roll containers because not everything fits or the stack is in danger of falling over.
threatens to fall over. Is that something order pickers like to do?
Two things bother me in the public debate on
automation and robotisation. The first is the narrowing of the discussion to
the perspective of the workforce. Will they soon still have jobs if the
robots actually take over the workplace? Of course, that aspect deserves a lot of
attention, but we should not lose sight of the fact that automation and
robotisation also leads to higher efficiency, lower costs, fewer errors
fewer physical complaints and often lower energy consumption. Or to put it another way:
automation and robotisation offer opportunities to improve sustainability on various levels.
sustainability.
The second issue concerns the view of the
workforce itself. Do they mind the character of their work changing
by the increasing automation or robotisation of the workplace? Do they
mind that they can do more work because a software system has
calculated how the work can be distributed most efficiently among everyone?
Do they resent it when the system points out a mistake to them that they would otherwise have had to fix with retrospective
more effort to fix? Have they ever been asked? I have to
think of the assembly workers at Audi's car plant in Ingolstadt.
They are now given parts in the right order and at the right time
handed to them by robots, so they no longer have to search and lift them themselves. They
can now concentrate better on assembling those parts.
What the radio presenter at least made clear
made was the great ignorance among many people about the unprecedented
technological possibilities that already exist today. I therefore advocate a beautifully
designed TV series on the smart technologies that Dutch companies are
are applying. I am thinking, among other things, of a documentary about the ingenuity of the
hundreds of shuttles with which Wehkamp's orders can be made ready within half an hour.
can be made ready within half an hour. Or about the smart algorithms for the most efficient
possible distribution of tasks in a warehouse among the available employees.
Such a programme showing the beauty of technology is not
only good for the sector's image, but perhaps also takes the fear of
automation and robotisation a little.
In the UK, this is already happening from time to time. The BBC
for example is broadcasting a documentary on Wednesday 23 December at 10.30pm that
shows how the online and logistics departments of department store chain John Lewis
are preparing for the busy December month. Mark it down in
your diary.
Marcel te Lindert - journalist logistics and supply chain
