When you enter Mitsukoshi departmental store you are greeted in honorific Japanese. But it is not a person greeting you, but hold your breadth – a lifelike robot. (See Image above).
Robots, unseen by us, have already muzzled their way into manufacturing process & have become an indispensable part of it. The Apple MacBook Air, on which this content is being created, has been through the hands of robots.
Moore’s Law still seems to be holding true. Chip & sensors prices continue to fall steeply; computing power keeps on increasing; rapid strides continue to be made in ‘voice & image’ recognition; gesture based technology seems to be taking root; Artificial Intelligence & machine learning is seeing a steep upward swing. All these trends are ensuring that the prices of robots fall steeply.
A robot, which till a few years was available for $1,00,000, is now available for merely $25000. And this downward spiral will continue.
Let us wing our way to Japan & understand how it is attempting to tackle 2 issues it is confronting by leveraging advances in robotic revolution.
1. Ageing population
2. Declining workforce
In Japan robots have entered, in a significant way, into factories. Now the Japanese government desires the robots to move into every corner of its economy, including household. Panasonic has developed a Robot Bed – a bed that can transform into a wheel chair (Referenced below)
Bottom Line: In years to come Robot will become an integral part of our lives & take over many of the jobs being currently done by humans.
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In this series, Rajesh Srivastava, Business Strategist and Visiting Faculty at IIM Indore gives you a regular dose of strategy case studies to help you think and keep you one step ahead as a professional as compared to your peers. Rajesh is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and IIT Kanpur and has over 2 decades of experience in the FMCG industry. All previous
Strategy with RS posts can be found here
