The Cybertech Project Technology in Organizations Group 9, Section C Aishvarya, Bharat, Deepak, Dhrubaj, Joy, Peeush The role

le of technology in contemporary organizations has been on an increase, more so in the past two decades. Automation the process of replacing manual type of labour with mechanical/automatic devices for improving productivity and in the case of mass-produced volumes. The meat production industry is characterized by highly manual processes requiring more demanding work. Though the productivity has increased tremendously, its safety concerns and distasteful working conditions made it very unglamorous, thus failing to attract any engineers or managers to join the industry. The Cybertech Project was the first of its kind trying to automate the entire meat-production process. With an initial outlay of A$38m, the project was considered to be too expensive, given that they did not find any conceivable utility out of installing the Cybertech. Perrows Matrix of Technologies can be used to study the Cybertech Project and its status. The Matrix consists of 4 technologies (Routine, Non-routine, Engineering and Craft) within which each organization can be placed. The Cybertech was positioned as a routine technology, though it was desired that Cybertech be a non-routine technology. Also, the second phase of the automation system is expected to cost A$13m, which has been planned to be brought down to A$5m. The overall automation reduces the manual labor required and therefore a number of workers might be laid off.

There is an innovative training being imparted by one of the Phoenixbased plants, which believed in developing the worker through training to improve the overall productivity. This lets the workers to be shuffled among different profiles and enables easier employee rotation. As the Chief Executive of Cybertech, I would look into the advantages and disadvantages of breaking the system up and selling the individual modules. I would also make sure that the cost of the Mark II system is contained within A$5m. Also, the meat-production industry needs to be convinced that complete automation was the way to move forward.