Discover how cutting-edge robotic applications are transforming the food industry, enhancing efficiency, safety, and quality

Table of contents

The application of robotics is increasingly becoming prevalent in the business world for industrial application and competitive advantage. Precisely, the integration of robots in the food industry has enhanced business productivity, reduced expenses and improves customers' experience. The usage rate of robots has an upward trajectory trend worldwide when industries modernize and balloon their production capabilities with the ability to execute complex jobs. In nutshell, robots promoted product quality and reduce costs since in the food industry they are widely used in the production systems for materials handling and packaging functionalities. Furthermore, they fulfill the rudimentary requirements like hygiene, speed and safety and even costs. In other words, increased efficiency leads to high productivity.

However, organizations are facing a myriad of challenges in implementing robotic technology in their organization. They include but are not limited to aggressive timescales and tight budgetary constraints. Notably, the evolution of robotic applications in the food industry took place in the1980s and the growth has been sluggish due to the high costs of the related technologies (Mathath et al., 2015). Therefore, project nexus is to develop a project management report that will stipulate a well-entrenched approach to a successful implementation of the Robotics application in the food processing industry.

The remaining segments of this essay are organized as follows: Segment two discusses the steps prerequisite for improving the success of the robotics application project. Segment three provides the theoretical perspectives of different strategies that are vital for organizations to develop a suitable organizations capability and successfully implement the robotics application in the food industry. Segment four involves addressing some of the project uncertainties to ensure they have been combated to facilitate successful navigation of the complexity in the robotics application project. Segment five and the concluding segment provide a conclusion based on the entire paper and, also recommendations.

2.0 Steps in development and implementation of robotic application in food industry

According to Purna Sudhakar (2011) although they may be differences in the definition of the project success, the incorporation of various constraints is common in the attempt of realization of the project objectives. The project success has been defined within the simple attainment of the time, cost and quality constraints. In other words, the effective execution of the steps in geared towards the project success. Thus, this report in implementation of the Robots projects in the food industry follows the following steps to complete the projects within the time constraints, budget as well as achieving a quality project.

2.1 Project charter and identification of the stakeholders

Fundamentally, it is the rationale for the business requirements. The project charter mainly stipulate the needs of the project and brief mentioning of the project and mentioning of the project manager and other stakeholders.

Therefore, it goes as follows:

Robotics application project – it is mainly the utilization of the robots in the food industry to be used for processing and packaging of the products. The main target is to increase productivity.

Project manager- Mr. Brown

Stakeholder – Mr.Zero –developer, Ms Pinto-developer, Ms zhang-software tester, Mr. Kim- financial advisor

2.2 Project planning

Upon the project approval by the stakeholders, the Robotic project manager is free to go on with its implementation plans. The utilization of the work breakdown structures is central to the identification of the work packages, control accounts and also planning packages. These components are significant in identification of the project scheduling and the resources needed for each project packages.

2.3 Communication plan and settings of objectives

The next plan is the communication of the project plan and settings its objectives. After the identification of the stakeholders, the robotic project manager communicates to all the stakeholders. Through the utilization of the communication management plan, project manager will maintain the details of needs and information and distribute it to all the stakeholders. The approach is prerequisite to avoiding any confusion in the future. Furthermore, it makes it easier for all the stakeholders to know the goals and objectives of the project. In nutshell, the objectives are set from the organizations points of view. Consequently, the objectives are also set at the individuals’ level. Some of the approaches used in the setting of the objectives include balanced score cards. It is imperative to conduct the objective process because the team members learn what is expected of them as the team and also individually. Project management step takes place upon the project manager getting the approval of the project plan from the senior management team. On the assumptions that the resources have already been allocated for the project, the project manager utilized them in the execution of the project. Notably, project manager is executing the project with the help of the team.

2.4 Tracking progress

After execution of the project, there is tracking progress and evaluation of the team members’ performance. The project execution stage, its progress has to be tracked to ensure the project quality, time and cost constraints. There is utilization of different tools and the techniques by the project manager such as decision trees and statistical control techniques to track the progress of the project. Therefore, after the tracking of the progress, there is conduction of the project status review (PSR) that happens periodically (Meng et al., 2017. At the end of the project module or the appraisal period, each member performance has to be evaluated. Precisely, the nexus of the performance appraisals is the identification of the training needs of the team members and take the appropriate actions.

2.5 Progress reporting and handling of the crisis

It is the duty of the project manager to update the top level management of the organizations in food industry on the status of the project. The status reporting is through employment of various techniques such as senior management review (SMR). On the other hand, while executing project, it is poised to face numerous risk or unexpected circumstances. Therefore, it is imperative for the project manager to include risk planning as the part of the project planning that include but not limited to identification of the risks and risk monitoring. Furthermore, with proper risk management plan, the project will be executed smoothly and swiftly. Also, in case of the uncertainties, the project manager may able to amend the changes and rescue the project.

2.6 Training and development and deliverables

The project manager will use the performance appraisals to structure training and development that the team needs. The training s is casted on the efficiency of an individual. Furthermore, to make sure of the training efficiency, the robotics project manager will be required to frequently update the training plan based on these training needs. Upon the readiness of the deliverables, the project manager will hand over the project to the parent organization. Notably, the status of the deliverables depends on the internal and external reviews. The organizations are expected to conduct testing of the deliverables. Since, the product is the robot; the project manager will release the deliverables and documentation to the organization support team. The engineering team receiving the robot project is responsible for providing the technical support.

2.7 Project closing

Once the Robot project is in the hands of the technical support team, the project manager will close the project officially. The project manager is expected to produce a report that intensively reviews the entire project. Furthermore, there is documentation of what have been learnt in the entire project development process. The project manager is expected to release all the human resources involved in the development of the project and officially communicate on the closure of the project to the stakeholders.

3.0 Strategies to improve performance for project success

The project strategy must be aligned with the corporate and business strategies. According to Bhuiyan et al (2005) top management in business employs development techniques to align organization strategies with daily basis projects development in order to improve the overall performance. Furthermore, many researchers have argued that aligning the project management processes with business strategy brings many benefits to an organization and the success of the project. Therefore, project strategy can be defined as the overarching set of the guidelines utilized by the making decisions and helping in taking the appropriate action. The premises of the strategies are to provide the cost efficiencies, increased productivity and create faster response time, a catalyst for indirect optimal project success. Therefore, the Robotic application report propose the following project strategies

3.1 Collaborative culture and effective communication strategies

The implementation of the Robotics application in the food industry is a critical factor and requires the maturity of the organization. Precisely, the maturity and proven project management policies are candidates of promoting productive teams of projects and a clear definition of the project objectives and goals. Notably, a project with a clear goals and objectives encourages collaborative work culture, improve effectiveness in communication and well-articulate project related policies and procedures. Furthermore, a clear defined project objectives and goals are vital in the development of the project plan and also its execution. According to Ibbs et al (2002), the organization success with the project management is associated with its project management maturity and a well-entrenched project management processes and practices contribute to optimal project success and its business value.

Notably, an effective communication contributes to more than 25% of the project failure as it has negative impact on the project success (PMI, 2017). Therefore, effective strategies are prerequisite in mitigating the ineffective communication in the Robots project. The robot project should employ a well-structured communication plan. According to PMBOK, the technique aid in describing the ways in which the project communication will be planned, structured, its implementation and monitoring (PMI, 2017). The plan needs to entails a myriad of ideas such as management and communication with the stakeholders and the timetable of the meetings and the project timetable. The communication project plan also needs to be detailed that clearly defines the objectives, parties involved in the project and the strategies to be followed to guarantee project success. Another effective communication strategy is the implementation of the communication plan and its strategies. The plan is achievable through ensuring that the communicant plan is effectively implemented by verification of the all-important communication activities as stipulated in the project schedule. According to Bourne (2010) the implementation also consist of the resources identified as necessary to execute communication activities and reported at the regular intervals, mostly in the project meetings.

3.2 Employee motivation using the Maslow’s hierarchy needs

In the PM, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is utilized for motivation and met the needs of the workers. In the nutshell, the project manager who knows their needs and the needs of the team members are in position to improve the success of the project (Nain, 2013). Furthermore, it is critical in influencing the attitudes of the team members. For instance, within the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs self-actualization employees are beneficial to the project manager. This is due to the fact that their personalities are always warming grounded and positive. They have the ability to see issues from the multiple viewpoint and human nature perfectly to make fair and balanced decisions. These individuals are suited to work perfectly both in groups and individually. Notably, an individual with self-actualization within the team is capable of influencing the rest of the groups and improve the overall project development.

Another important aspect of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is the psychological needs. The organization planning to implement Robots project need to ensure that the project team has the basics for survival such as clean water and shelter. With the project team feeling they have strong sense of security in their life; their work relationship should be enjoyable and fulfilling. Motivated employees tend to have confident in their performance a prerequisite factor in reaching the level of self-actualization in the project development. In this context, the workers will have the freedom to be spontaneous, creative and motivated enough to improve their individual performance and the general project outcome.

Other factors within the framework include: safety needs: job security, belongings and love needs: job connections, esteem needs: respect, cognitive needs: further training and Aesthetics needs: positive perspective of the environment.

4.0 Challenges

Uncertainties are the unavoidable aspects of majority of the project that many project managers including the proficient one have had difficult time handling it. The project manager have been employing decision milestones for anticipation of the outcomes, the risk management mechanism to prevent the disasters for ensuring all the team members are making the desired product yet the product still ends up with overrun schedule, overflowing budget and also some of the specifications compromised (De Meyer et al., 2002) .

4.1 sickness of workers

This uncertainty is unprecedented and has the potentialities of leading to project delay and eventually project failure. In the recent times, due to outbreak of the deadly pandemic COVID-19, there have been uncertainties surrounding human health (Gupta et al., 2021). It is required that workers with COVID-19 infection should stay at home and quarantine until they recover in order to avoid spreading to their colleagues. Therefore, the project may stall depending on the extent of the workers sickness. Notably, human resource play a critical role in the development of the Robots project since the project heavily relies on the expert input from the inception to the closure project development stage.

4.2 The unanticipated difficulty of the tasks

Generally, the development of the Robotic application is a high-intense and complex project. The project is mainly developed on the framework of the artificial intelligence. It’s imperative for the project team to be composed of high-level engineers and developers who have both the capacity and ability to customize the robot to execute its responsibilities based on the needs of the organization. Although, the project manager and project team may have enlist some of the project modules they make encounter and strategies to handle them, it is likely that they may face some unprecedented uncertainties that make it difficult to swiftly execute development.

4.3 parts delivery

The robot project involves assembling of different parts and high level programming. It can be noted that some of the parts are imported or sourced from companies located abroad. Therefore, they is likability that due to global supply chain disruption due to the outbreak of Covid-19, there may be delay and hence reduce the speed of the development of the project. Furthermore, the ongoing major crisis such as Russia and Ukraine plays a significant role in the disruption of the global supply chain. The delay of the delivery also can impact negatively on the cost of the project. With delayed deliverance, employees are unused while they have to be paid their dues as stipulated in the contract.

5.0 Conclusion and recommendation

Robots application in the food industry enhances efficiency, eventually improve productivity. The application is an innovation disruption that is expected to change the mode of operation in the food processing and packaging in the food industry. Thus, it is salient for organizations to realize its impact and invest in it accordingly. However, since the project is developed in line with project management practices, it should adhere to the project management rules, regulations and protocols. In other words, they should be employment of project management steps from its inception to closure to guarantee the project success. Furthermore, to improve on its success, the project manager is expected to incorporate strategies align with the corporate strategies. These strategies not only ensure there is high productivity but also improve the performance of the project team and all stakeholders. The theoretical perspective of the Maslow’s hierchary of needs ensures the employees are motivated and facilitate confident in their work. Other strategies include development of effective communication channel and cultural relationship.

However, the project may face some of the uncertainties such as delay of deliveries and workers sickness that delays the development and implementation of the project and finally, the project outcome. Based on the uncertainties, this report suggests the following recommendations

Breakdown of the project into smaller projects and milestones

Frequently perform the pilots tests

Flexibility of the timetable where workers can even work from home e.g software developers

References

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Bourne, L., 2010, February. Beyond reporting—the communication strategy. In PMI® Global Congress.

De Meyer, A., Loch, C.H. and Pich, M.T. (2002). Managing project uncertainty: from variation to chaos. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 30(3), pp.91–91. doi:10.1109/emr.2002.1032403.

Gupta, M., Jain, R., Taneja, S., Chaudhary, G., Khari, M. and Verdú, E. (2021). Real-time measurement of the uncertain epidemiological appearances of COVID-19 infections. Applied Soft Computing, 101, p.107039. doi:10.1016/j.asoc.2020.107039.

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Nain, B. (2013). Nain’s Porous Hierarchy of Needs: An Alternative to Maslow’s Hierarchy/Theory of Needs. SSRN Electronic Journal, 4(3). doi:10.2139/ssrn.2279375.

Project Management Institute (2017). PMBOK® Guide. [online] Pmi.org. Available at: https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/foundational/pmbok.

Purna Sudhakar, G., Farooq, A. and Patnaik, S. (2011). Soft factors affecting the performance of software development teams. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 17(3/4), pp.187–205. doi:10.1108/13527591111143718.

AcademicShujaa

Monday, September 9, 2024

ROBOTIC APPLICATION PROJECT IN FOOD INDUSTRY (Revolutionizing the Food Industry: Innovative Robotic Applications and Projects)

1.0 Introduction