Four fundamentals of workplace automation
28 Nov 2016
In 2015 McKinsey & Company set out to investigate the potential automation technologies held for jobs, organisations, and the future of work, in an article titled “Four fundamentals of workplace automation”
We wanted to share with you six insights from McKinsey’s important fundamentals, which are likely to impact your business.
- Very few occupations will be automated in their entirety in the near or medium term.
- Rather, certain activities are more likely to be automated, requiring entire business processes to be transformed, and jobs performed by people to be redefined.
- Fewer than 5 percent of occupations can be entirely automated using current technology.
- However, about 60 percent of occupations could have 30 percent or more of their constituent activities automated.
- The benefits (ranging from increased output to higher quality and improved reliability, as well as the potential to perform some tasks at superhuman levels) typically are between three and ten times the cost.
- In many cases, automation technology can already match, or even exceed, the median level of human performance required.