Automation in the Workplace? 82
thefluxster asks: "The company I work for considers efficiency and automation two of the most important standards to live/work by while employed for them. To further this cause, several individuals have been employed specifically to design and implement various programs, scripts, and (where APIs aren't available) macros designed in Macro Express 3. Using these methods, the group has been able to shave very significant amounts of man hours off various projects. To the Slashdot community I ask: What, if any, applications, processes, etc. have you or your company put in place to increase productivity?"
I think it's a good idea. (Score:5, Funny)
<humour>
After all, we have many automatons here where I work....it seems to work out great!
</humour>
RAM (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:RAM (Score:2)
Also, it's modularity aides in developing more complex scripts based on many smaller scripts.
At my job, in the Art Department, I've written a series of scripts for automating our outsourcing procedure. All you do is run it on a job folder and it takes the active files, copies them to an outsource folder, labeles the folder for the vendor, opens the files allowing us to create outlines of the fonts and do other preflighting to the file,
well... (Score:1)
Organic Automation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Organic Automation (Score:3, Interesting)
If you remove all of the monotonous tasks, then you run the risk of every person needing a significant level of ability for the whole system (department, company, whatever) to operate smoothly.
Unfortunately, those were the types of roles that you'd typically use for interns and other inexperienced employees. You could see what their learning ability was, and how out how well their work ethic and personality meshed with the organization.
By over optimizing, yo
Sarbanes Oxley (Score:5, Informative)
How many of you are experiancing THAT?
Re:Sarbanes Oxley (Score:2)
That being said, SOX is typically not the problem -- it's an inflexible staff and/or crappy auditor which is usually the problem.
Re:Sarbanes Oxley (Score:2)
Re:Sarbanes Oxley (Score:2)
Cor, you're looky!
At my job, they overshot slowing things down, and now we're all moving in reverse!
Everywhere I possibly can (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Everywhere I possibly can (Score:2)
Automation is not without it's limitations... (Score:1, Interesting)
If you spend, say, 3 days at 8 hours a day to automate something, in order to save 5 minutes/day, you'll need 288 days just to break even on the time you've spent. If the system you're automating changes every six months, the 3 days you spend setting up the automation ends up costing you time.
Consider your second example like this:
Suppose you d
Re:Automation is not without it's limitations... (Score:2)
Consider: 1) Turnover, 2) Inelastic resources. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything you said is worthwhile to consider. However, there are two factors you didn't mention, turnover and inelastic resources. When you implement automation software, the amount of automation does not change. All that happens is that a machine is the robot, not a human.
Humans have a low tolerance for being robots, especially those who can think well enough to be useful in an office. So, you left out a cost of not automating: After a year, Jenny gets tired of being a robot at your company and gets a job being a robot somewhere else. That way she is at least able to experience a change of environment. The cost of finding and hiring and training another Jenny is $6,000. That's another big reason automation software pays for itself.
But, as they say on those late-night pushy commercials, that's not all. Jenny's manager supervises her and 5 others like her. It's a serious pain to manage 5 humans who are largely being asked to be robots. So, there is high turnover among managers, too, when there is low machine automation.
Another huge factor is inelastic resources. You may want Jenny to accomplish more than is possible for one person without automation. You may not have enough office space for another Jenny, or enough human resources to train another person. You may not be able to find someone who can truly replace Jenny, who is very loyal and knowledgeable about the myriad of details in running a business. The problems associated with inelastic resources can get very expensive.
Re:Consider: 1) Turnover, 2) Inelastic resources. (Score:1)
But, as they say on those late-night pushy
Efficiency has typically led to expansion. (Score:2)
To an extreme degree, the U.S. culture is not one in which a business leader finds a way to automate and then decides to take life easy. The U.S. history is one in which efficiency has typically led to expansion, sometimes huge expansion. Henry Ford, for example.
Re:Consider: 1) Turnover, 2) Inelastic resources. (Score:1)
Re:Consider: 1) Turnover, 2) Inelastic resources. (Score:1)
>Clearly, businesses are not in the business of providing
>jobs.. they are in the business of transacting business..
>With the lowest costs possible.. which means the highest
>efficiency..
That's not at all clear.
Or rather, it's clear that they're not *currently* in the business of providing jobs, but it's far from clear that they shouldn't be. Corporations are chartered by the government for the public good - it's up to u
A Serious Reply (Score:5, Interesting)
In one case, a computer manufacturer was functionally testing motehrboards on the bench, employing dozens of technicians. For each board tested, setup and teardown (plugging in/unplugging power supplies, drive cables, keyboard, monitor, etc.) was about 7 minutes per board, test time about 3 minutes, total 10 minutes per board.
I designed an interface utilizing "pogo pins," a.k.a. "bed of nails" in a vacuum actuated interface adaptor to connect all the peripherals, effectively redicing setup/teardown to zero, plus eliminating the wear-and-tear on connectors, both on the motherboards and the peripheral cables. Tes t time went from 10 to 3 minutes per board.
You can see what this did for throughput, plus 1 person/test station could now do the same work in the same time as previously required 3 people.
Needless to say, I was a hero--and invoiced accordingly.
Re:A Serious Reply (Score:5, Funny)
1 person/test station could now do the same work in the same time as previously required 3 people.
Needless to say, I was a hero--and invoiced accordingly.
And then got your ass kicked in the parking lot by the two guys who just lost their jobs!
Re:A Serious Reply (Score:3, Funny)
Give this man a +10 Clairvoyant!
Okay, maybe +1 Funny, but the fact is, he ain't far from wrong, and it was more like 17.
Re:A Serious Reply (Score:2)
Seriously?
Re:A Serious Reply (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A Serious Reply (Score:2)
And then got your ass kicked in the parking lot by the two guys who just lost their jobs!
It's a funny comment, but it I'm suprised by how many people actually think that way.
If the automation increases productivity then it increases your companies competitiveness. That makes more financially feasible for salaries to rise at the company. At my work it would only mean that the other two could focus on other higher-level tasks. Of course, you have to wonder if the company will just pocket the increased pr
Re:A Serious Reply (Score:2)
It is correct in most cases. Automation right now can remove the tasks that any idiot can do, but the harder, more expensvie tasks are not automatable. The people who do those jobs are often people who don't have the mental ability to handle more complex job.
Anyone (with minimal physical abilities) can place tab A into slot B all day on an assembly line. No brain power required at all. No anyone can program the robot that does it in their place, nor can most people fix that robot. Even if they co
Everything (Score:4, Interesting)
My work mantra is to make the computers do things that computers are good at, and free up the humans to do the things they're good at. Seems to work for me. . . since I've taken up that policy, both the quality and quantity of work that my team can do has increased appreciably.
Re:Everything (Score:2)
Wow. You must be efficient.
Believe it or not... (Score:2, Interesting)
Okay, I didn't, but it was close. I was doing web development, and a client was spending a lot of money (close to 100K) for what was actually a pretty basic website. The thing that bumped up the fee a lot was that they had fortnightly events, and a member of staff had to travel to various places in the country, get the material, and update the website.
Of course, the half-hour script I wrote relegated his job to merely dragging a file from on
Well, here's the source to my latest... (Score:3, Funny)
anti-automation (Score:1)
It's easy to see this as a simple grudge between different classes of workers, but I think it actually came down to the fact that automating too much prevented middle
Re:anti-automation (Score:2)
Re:anti-automation (Score:1)
Re:anti-automation (Score:2)
Re:anti-automation (Score:2)
And I identify with the "greybeard" reference.
Re:anti-automation (Score:1)
dev tools (Score:2, Interesting)
Best Windows Automation Tool? AutoIt? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm very interested to know which are the best automation programs and macro programs for Windows and for Linux.
Is Macro Express [macros.com], mentioned in the Slashdot article, the best?
For Windows automation, I've used the free AutoIt [autoitscript.com], which is amazingly complete and well-developed. AutoIt comes with an autocompletion IDE [autoitscript.com] that automatically displays function usage information. The version that includes the IDE installs easily. AutoIt also has a compiler, which is also free.
I used WinBatch [winbatch.com] several years ago, but I had a huge amount of trouble getting technical support for it.
Microsoft has released several scripting languages, but my experience is that they are poorly documented.
AutoHotkey runs AutoIt scripts, apparently. (Score:2)
Just below someone mentions AutoHotkey [autohotkey.com]. Looks great, and mentions AutoIt.
Re:Best Windows Automation Tool? AutoIt? (Score:2)
Re:Best Windows Automation Tool? AutoIt? (Score:2, Insightful)
Time-saving? (Score:2)
Re:Time-saving? (Score:2)
There were, I think, two reasons -
1) He wanted as many people under him as he could get. He was, after all, a power hungry little pain in the rear (I was there before he was hired, so he had nothing to do with my getting the job)
2) He didn't understand what the heck was going on. He was a paper MCSE who thought he was up on the programming side of things because his wife was
AutoHotkey is excellent (Score:3, Interesting)
At work automation isn't that well known, but I'll probably try to improve things next summer. Once I had to learn & teach the graphic designers how to use photoshop's batch functions. We had to convert 700 images from hi-quality to web quality and they were going to do it by hand. It took about 15 minutes with a script.
Re:AutoHotkey is excellent (Score:2)
ImageMagick [imagemagick.com] is another tool you could use to automate this kind of tasks.
Installs and cfengine scripts (Score:1)
cron is a great application (Score:3, Interesting)
Pragmatic Automation (Score:3, Informative)
If you write software, take a look at the book Pragmatic Project Automation [pragmaticprogrammer.com] (I think it was reviewed a few months ago here on /.)
It is geared a lot towards Java projects, but there are some philosophical nuggets there for any project.
Two things come to mind ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Use Configuration Files / Tables Intelligently
Sometimes applications that need to process data from a variety of sources can be made much easier by spending a bit of time designing configuration resources. This can include designing "little languages", incorporating tools like lex and yacc.
Example: We once had to build a system to process real-time market data feeds from a variety of sources. The sources sometimes changed the format of their feeds, and we had to add new sources semi-regularly. Fortunately, there was a great deal of logical commanality among the sources. We wrote a little language which could be used to describe a source, then processed that to generate the server configuration tables automatically. That meant quicker turnaround and fewer errors with many fewer code tweaks.
Use Existing Tools
There is no need to re-invent the functionality of a packaged application that you already have.
Example: We had to generate transaction confirmations in a variety of forms, depending on factors like existing/new customer, applicable law, type of transaction, etc. The data was all in a database, but the text pieces got changed fairly frequently, since it was a new business area. We used a database extract program together with mail/merge in a commercial word processor (WordPerfect on Unix) to generate the documents. That gave much quicker development (no need to write formatting / text manipulation stuff), with the added advantage that the end product was a directly-printable document that could be easily edited by hand in case of last-minute changes.
Data Channels (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Data Channels (Score:1)
Re:Data Channels (Score:1)
In relation to " One of the dangers of automation is that when machines start to handle data the people forget it", I have found it almost impossible to find out how my credit-score is worked out. Anyone I ask tells me "the computer figures it out". More detail usually stops at "Your credit history is taken into account, along with your current financial status". Big News.
I assume that anyone doing credit checking will not want to disclose thier exact algorithms, but it is disheartening to a
Dependant on workplace (Score:3, Insightful)
Now this is with a small company that had almost no automation what so ever. Everything was done by hand, everything was printed, everything was passed around the office. You may have it different where bottlenecks dont show themselves so easily. My advice would be to sit at peoples desk and watch them work.
AutoHotkey (Score:1)
Re:AutoHotkey (Score:1)
On of the UNIX principles is (or, rather, should be, because it seems sometimes to be forgotten) : under each GUI you have a CLI. Then you don't need to automate a GUI. Scripting give you much more freedom and power.
Slashdot: Helping each other. (Score:2)
Which is an entirely good use of Slashdot.
Automate... by Network Automation (Score:2)
Motorola's Digital Six Sigma (Score:1)
Re:Motorola's Digital Six Sigma (Score:2)
The obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
I found I was spending a lot of time writing good slashdot comments. But Slashdot has so many dupes and near-dupes that it was worth doing a little keyword matching on my previous highly rated comments and reposting them. It works pretty well; this is time 7.0000000 for this comment.
Own dev tools (Score:2)
The advantage of all these fine tools is that it enables us to make big things in little time.
Web - database - driven web forms (Score:1)
Actually, I see all business to business interactions as being definable by rules sets..
Even bidding and haggling can be defined algorithmically.. as can the process of recognition.. vision.. OCR is one example..
The really interest
Exchange and Outlook (Score:1)
Timing is everything (Score:1)
I guess it's a management issue, but I for one would really like to improve productivity within my organization - if only I had the time.
Re:Timing is everything (Score:2)
What you have to ask yourself is, "What am I doing every single t
uhh Math? (Score:2)
WAN equipment maintenance (Score:3, Interesting)
Aside from the many typos, this was obviously limited in scale. Each switch model had a unique user interface - some straight TTY, some ncurses-like vt100 screen addressing - that made maintenance confusing and error prone. I created a script in TCL/Expeck/TK that allowed command execution automation (with a nice GUI, stored procedures, detailed audit trails, etc.) and parallel execution (e.g. command execution on 100 switches at the same time).
With that script, any authorized individual could execute a dozen commands on a thousand switches in a couple of minutes, something that would have taken days if performed manually. When I left, it was being used not only ad-hoc for maintenance activities, but cron'd for things like data collection, equipment inventory, equipment status monitoring. It was also used to automate testing, as stored procedures could be collected and kicked off against the test networks. Usage had grown until it basically had its own 8-way Xeon machine, running flat out almost 24x7.
Also, note that software development wasn't part of my job function, though I was an experienced software developer before joining the organization. Simply in terms of the equivalent manpower, that one script saved the company tens of millions of dollars/year. Our equiment vendor liked it a lot and was authorized to use it on our network for specific activities. They even offered to buy it at one point for a 7-figure sum, but were turned down; after all, it provided a competative advantage.
In return for the development, I received a 50 dollar gift check, and the upper level manager that presented it was confused about what the recognition award was for. That wasn't the first time something like that happened, and it wasn't the last.
The point of the above isn't to blow my own horn, it's to demonstrate that people rarely appreciate the value of scripts/automation.
Another element: sorta non-tech (Score:2)
I have similar formatting "algorithms" (okay, macros) running under MS Excel that puts text into the correct order, form, and format for integration in Quark for publication.
"Automatio
one method (Score:1)
Getting rid of Windows.
DT
Surefire way to boost productivity (Score:2)
(Also, serious answer: When I started there, our twice-monthly invoices were generated in more-or-less random order. I wrote software that, wow, alphabetized them, to make them easier to file. Cost a ten-hours-per-week girl her job, but she was the only one upset about it. Everyone else loved me for it.)
Trying to sell Macro Express 3 are we? (Score:1)
My Career (Score:3, Informative)
The most crucial thing to automate is tasks that tie up staff, something as simple as adding an automatic email at the end of a process can free up a tech from having to sit and watch "The Paint Dry".
You can automate for speed but that is minor in the business world. A 5% saving in speed is easily eclipsed by increasing the install time by 10% but not having a tech needed (A 110% increase in 0% [the required tech time] is still 0%)
Case Scenario from 2002:
Small helpdesk of 6 members (at 40 hours a week so a total 240 labor hours a week).
Target Activity: Image building. Requiring 80 labor hours for imaging and testing. (33% of available labor time)
Subordinate Tasks: Staff also answer help desk calls.
Current Work Load: 4 images over a month. Average 1 image a week.
Reductions: Implemented several steps including using winbatch, msi, qa scripting, and prism to reduce imaging time to 30 minutes + 30 minutes of QA script validation.. Savings: 79 hours.
Development Time: 1 month @ 40 hours a week.
ROI: (Pay undisclosed) 5 months. And to this day they're still using the system. Recent tweaks allow for easier bulk re-imaging in the middle of the night and thanks to linux managing the boot process Windows XP machines can be queried to re-image themselves via a web page.
Some solutions doesn't really speed anything up but just removes the need for a tech to be involved. That allows for those techs to be doing other activites. Over a year this type of labor savings doesn't usually result in a reduction in staff but does prevent staff growth. Other common tasks that can be report generation, patch and virus distrubtion, audit log collection, and file distribution. Currently the project I am working on is a weekly system-wide workstation re-imaging process to automatically re-image machines after 7 days for security and system maintenance. Expected labor savings are huge and will eliminate staff needing to come in on weekends.
The most common starting point is asking the staff, "Do you ever get bored doing something?" That's where I start when looking for things to automate. Boring tasks usually take little in the way of brain power and are easy targets for automation. Not all redundant tasks can be automated but many can be. I found one location that had a staffer who's whole existence was to copy and past a value from an AS/400 screen to an excel spreadsheet. 15 minutes later and he was out of a job. The amount of waste in some companies is staggering. Good luck on the automation work, loads of fun.
Excellent Toosl for Automation
Winbatch (Pay close attention to the roboscript tool to speed things along)
Winrunner or QA Wizard
Perl (VERY POWERFUL TOOL, A MUST KNOW)
Wise Package Studio
Prism and Prism Deploy
Know your MSI inside and out (Software installs are a massive waste of tech time.)
PHP (for writing easy web pages to run everything. No process should be too complicated for a 10 year old child. You are after all automating things to make it easier, not harder.)
Have Fun! Expect angry staffers though. Automation Enginneers (mechanical, procedural, or software) aren't the most well liked people. So far I've been lucky with only 14 death threats. I can't imagine how the mechanical engineers cope with it.