Discover how cutting-edge robotic applications are transforming the food industry, enhancing efficiency, safety, and quality
Table of
contents
2.0 Steps in development and implementation of robotic
application in food industry
2.1 Project charter and identification of the stakeholders
2.3 Communication plan and settings of objectives
2.5 Progress reporting and handling of the crisis
2.6 Training and development and deliverables
3.0 Strategies to improve performance for project success
3.1 Collaborative culture and effective communication
strategies
3.2 Employee motivation using the Maslow’s hierarchy needs
4.2 The unanticipated difficulty of the tasks
5.0 Conclusion and recommendation
1.0 Introduction
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
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