From Looking Digital to Being Digital: The Impact of Technology on the Future of Work Recombination of human and machines Kiva warehouse robots combine machine mine more effectively. Observation of the is also integral to Amazon.com’s ability to intelligence and learning with a human behavior of robots and algorithms reveals deliver an extraordinary variety of retail capacity for spotting improvement equally powerful insights into how to goods—including in some cases perishable opportunities. Like the delicate interplay organize warehouse inventory. groceries—on-time with accuracy and between remotely operated mining low-cost. As a result of its acquisition equipment, warehouse robots can be With regard to the idea of separate and of Kiva Systems in 2012, Amazon now choreographed to move in complex and distinct universes for people and machines, operates one of the world’s largest fleets shifting patterns based on fluctuations in work designers are coming to learn a lesson of industrial robots in its warehouses. market demand, improvement suggestions that game designers learned years ago: made by kaizen teams of warehouse that human beings increasingly experience These devices, resembling turtles because employees or continuously updated supply the world through computers, not versus of their low center of gravity and broad chain data. For example, during the days computers. This insight flows against backs, are guided by computers to pick up leading up to Valentine’s Day, racks with the long-standing view (or caricature) of pallets, deliver them to central stations relevant items such as chocolates in heart- humans treating computers and robots as where employees select items in line with shaped boxes are automatically moved alien. Today, by contrast, everything from 23 a pick list, and return pallets to their closer to packing stations. wearable computers (like Google Glass) to previous location—saving miles of walking handheld accessories (like smartphones) on the part of fulfillment center workers. Human-digital recombination challenges and ubiquitous access to search assumes As Amazon senior vice president Jeff Wilke a number of assumptions in work design. that humans and computers don’t just explained, “Technology is unlocking human Prominent among those challenges is coexist, they collaborate. potential. Technology is allowing humans the rejection of an impenetrable divide to spend less time doing non-valuable between humans and machines. The things like walking to spend more time on challenge surfaces two ways. In the Experiment-driven design process improvement for customers and first instance, the practice of real-time 22 the company.” adaptation assumes that humans and machines can learn from each other. For Experiment-driven design is a work example, at Rio Tinto data analysts and practice that generates feedback as early machine operators have a new appreciation as possible, to uncover user (customer or for the behavior of the machines with worker) preferences, catch design flaws, which they work. Data generated from and create a better end product than dozens of mines and hundreds of pieces of equipment reveal vital clues as to how to Human beings increasingly experience the world through computers, not versus computers. 28 | Accenture | Copyright 2014 Accenture. All rights reserved. ©