Do AI And Industrial Bots Help In Supply Chain Management?

Digitisation has established its reliability almost in all sectors, and most businesses have come to rely on digital processes and procedures. Consider communicating with co-workers, or reaching out to customers all across the globe, businesses have no choice, but to switch to digital processes. In the current times, companies are really working hard for cost-saving, with emerging technologies like RPA, AI, IoT and VR. For JK Technosoft, it’s no different.

In an e-interaction with Gairika Mitra, Sanghamitra Barman – Deputy General Manager – RPA at JK Technosoft tells us about their tech rituals.

Edited excerpts:

How can leveraging automation increase the efficiency of businesses? Is this need for the hour?

Augmenting or replacing mundane and repetitive human activities with task automation is quickly becoming a standard practice for businesses who want to compete in today’s dynamic marketplace. As technology tenaciously accelerates the pace of change, organisations must embrace every opportunity to extend proficiency, enhance productivity and reduce time cost, so that they can boost the bottom line and remain ahead of the curve. In this time of global uncertainty where businesses are dealing with less manpower, leveraging automation is the only way to keep the businesses afloat. With the digitisation of business processes, automation technologies will not only help with optimized resources but will also improve multi-department visibility, well-established processes, and making more time to focus on critical processes and thus further drive profits.

How can automation and robotics help improve the warehouse-to-wardrobe value chain and also address is issues like congestion, emission and commute times? 

The retail and supply chain industry is going through a major transformation, which has put a lot of focus on the infrastructure that processes warehouse to the wardrobe value chain. Employing automated solutions, both over and under-stocking plays a vital role in dealing with various aspects of value-chain and helps in reaching the next horizon of operational effectiveness. Tasks such as driving forklifts, and inventory management by using emerging technologies like AI, IoT, and machine learning can revolutionise the whole warehouse management.

With the evolution of self-driving technologies or automated vehicles (AVs), it is expected not only to reduce congestion, emission, and commute time, but will also provide safety and caution and expected to be a boon for the elderly and disabled persons.

How can emergent tools like AI and Industrial Bots help in supply chain management?

The adoption of emerging technologies in supply chain management (SCM) has increased significantly across the globe over several years. The reason for this adoption is the surge in demand for transparency and visibility on supply chain data and processes, along with the requirement of enhancing customer service. The recent disruptions in the supply chain caused due to the global pandemic of COVID-19 highlight the need to integrate emerging technologies in the supply chain and come up with a digital supply chain business model.

There are several benefits that can be attained by leveraging the upcoming technologies in SCM. For example, robots and other automated solutions can augment human actions and mental tasks; thereby help free up human labor and have humans do more value-add tasks while reducing the time they spend, increasing efficiency and accuracy. Technologies like Artificial Intelligence(AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Blockchain, IoT(Internet of Things), etc.will boost the inventory and risk management, enhance visibility, and further increase the flexibility to respond in a timely manner to the changing supply chain demands, and better data analysis, reporting and decision making. 

How is technology inevitable to address consumer needs better, reduce costs, drive efficiency, Innovation, and beat the competition?

With the outbreak of COVID19, the world is witnessing digital transformation at an unprecedented rate. Betting big on technology is the way to survive the present situation. Organizations that re-define their business strategy to equip themselves with emerging technologies are the ones who can survive this wave. The adoption of the right technology at the right time can create streamlined processes and bring out effective results also, at the same time improve productivity. Ultimately it will save time and effort, resulting in cost savings, and increased revenues.  Thus, it is must that enterprises across verticals push themselves towards digital transformation to deal with pandemic blues.

How does RPA come as a rescue in this time of COVID19 when organisations are coping with the minimal workforce?

RPA is bringing about efficiency and can transform workforce design structures where robots and humans work together. As these robots automate the most mundane, repetitive tasks, humans will only need to refocus their efforts on strategic and value-added tasks. Especially during this pandemic time of COVID19, where industries have to survive with the minimal workforce, RPA is coming as savior ensuring business continuity by taking up many of the human activities and working through them 24*7.

The evidence of RPA has prominently seen across industries. One such example is the retail sector where RPA is ruling at the moment. The retail organisations have a massive stack of processes such as inventory management, invoice processing, stock allocation, customer queries, business analytics, and order processing, to name a few. These are some of the best cases for automation to achieve high efficiency and reduce cost.  

Thus, in this critical time when organisations are working with a shortage of staff, these emergent technologies are not less than a blessing.