How To Successfully Transition Through the Automation Journey

“Workflow automation enables our people to transcend what they do today and go beyond the parts of their jobs they don't enjoy. It also helps eliminate the routine mistakes they make, allowing them to focus on areas where they can add unique human advantages, such as creativity and empathy. Ultimately, this is how we can add value, and that's what "engineering happiness" means - moving to a more desirable state.”, says Ben Randall, Product Line Manager - Chevron Technical Centre, Chevron.

During his recent online event session, Leading through Change to Successfully Transition Through the Automation Journey, Ben Randall spoke to the Oil and Gas IQ community about the transitionary challenges and successful implementation of workflow automation across an organization, sharing examples from Chevron’s own success story.

Traditionally, automation was more focused on more labour-intensive tasks, requiring large equipment, extensive capital outlay and a longer ROI. However, what organizations are focused on today is cognitive automation, with lower barriers to entry, less effort, quicker payback, and immense value propositions for any organization. With workflow automation complementing human knowledge, it enables two things: ‘better’ and ‘faster’ decisions, where in the past, organizations faced a choice between having either better decisions or faster ones. Now, it's not about threatening jobs; rather, it's about augmenting them and moving towards a world of abundant opportunities.

LEARN: What is Connected Worker Technology?

For Chevron’s technical team, their verification steps process previously required great human effort, given the high stakes and the need to avoid failure. With automation, their teams can now verify basic requirements upfront, allowing them to focus their scarce and finite time on more complex or fringe cases that require creativity, empathy, and unique human traits.

While stakeholders see the inherent value in automation, the idea is usually met with resistance to change from both a leadership and workforce perspective. Leaders need to inspire their workforce by demonstrating how automation will only provide outputs and humans will evaluate that output to identify areas for improvement and enhancement.

READ: How is Digital Transformation Supporting Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas?

“The goal is not to have robots take over; we want humans in the loop. We possess intrinsic human abilities that machines can't match, and by collaborating with automation, we can deliver superior outcomes.”, says Ben.

As Chevron strives to automate a lot of their assurance workflow systems, the workforce struggles to let go of their traditional ways of working. To overcome this, the leaders at Chevron have taken the time to showcase benefits and explain how automating mundane tasks will allow them to focus more on tasks they find truly chaEmbllenging. While the process has not been a simple one, it is something organizations need to overcome to move forward to make businesses safer, more efficient, and more profitable than ever before.

Ultimately, it is up to leaders to successfully lead and implement change across the organization. Leaders need to empower the workforce and provide the resources they need to effectively upskill, technically, culturally and thoughtfully. First, give your workforce the skills to build the automation programmes, allowing impactful collaboration between domain experts, statisticians, data scientists and IT professionals. Secondly, change the cultural mindset around upskilling, offering them the space and safety of asking questions that will allow them to understand the new systems and programmes. And lastly, come together across teams, companies, and industries to share examples and case studies to successfully lead through change. 

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Interested in learning more?

Join over 150 industry experts at The Connected Worker Europe event in Munich, Germany from 4-6 December. This year's event will feature a cross-industry exploration of the challenges faced by digital manufacturing leaders and will help you develop an action plan to leverage data driven connected worker technologies, enabling seamless collaboration, enhanced insights and drive informed decisions on the frontline. Download the agenda here.