Workforce Automation, Big waves ahead !

A new shopping season is coming soon, some of us will line up early, wandering in the streets around some of our favorite shops, but many won’t and will simply order their gifts online, filling their digital carts.

In the backstage, Automation & Productivity leaders such as Amazon, are revolutionizing their warehouses and logistics to meet our orders, Amazon is employing more than 15,000 robot elves to help fulfill the expected demand, carrying tall and heavy storage shelves.

In the past, humans used to patrol the aisles, now the humans stay put and the robots play fetch, bringing shelves to pickers. Robots can now pack in more goods per square foot, millions of different products, reaching hundreds of items every second in peak days.

In case you've not seen it, here's a video of Amazon's mechanical warehouse in action !

In this fantastic time for automation and productivity, we should all realize that we’re in the middle of a second wave of transformation that goes beyond the warehouse automation, which automatizes now much higher forms of intellectual work, including knowledge work or white collars work, as potential productivity gains are becoming huge.

Many analysts forecast massive productivity gain: 5-7 trillions of $ of potential Economic impact Worldwide by 2025 thanks to the automation of  Knowledge Work.

Source :  Mc Kinsey Global Institute Report

In France as an example, Roland Berger analysts forecast that 42% of all jobs could be potentially automated by 2025, with a potential 3 millions headcounts impact and 140 Billions of $ of productivity gain . Source: Roland Berger Report (in french)

Disruptive Technologies are changing our lives at a swift pace , and it will exponentially be faster in a near future as the rate of change itself is accelerating.

This is both for us a threat and an opportunity, personally the idea that half of today’s jobs may vanish has changed my view of my children’s future.

So let’s embrace now this profound transformation positively, open the debate, challenge any denial, taking up this Techno-Societal wave as a great chance to reinvent our future !