Simple product management tricks
The last point is one I've been employing very successfully lately. I think Toyota speaks of it as "figure out a really good process using humans first, then consider automating."<p>Doing something manually takes less time than you think if you create a good standard sequence that irons out most of the mechanical waste involved. Once the process starts to provide a lot of value (or no value – which is most commonly the case!) you can decide to automate further (or not at all.)<p>But also at that point you have to be careful. Automate little steps at a time. Automate the easy, happy path first and quickly bail out to the human operator if something goes wrong, then reconsider if the economics are still in favour of further automation. The last percent of automation are invariably the most expensive, by far.