Guide to Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

What is Robotic Process Automation?

In Lean Six Sigma, we work to improve our business processes, and automation can be a excellent improvement tool.  With robotic process automation (RPA), we automate repetitive processes using software “bots”.  (Not physical robots.)  More specifically, we automate process tasks that users perform on screen -- often with little no coding.  This is different from automating back-end software tasks using a scripting language like Python.  The video below provides an introduction to robotic process automation.

How It Works

RPA tools can capture clicks, keystrokes, and the computer screen.  Those actions could be used for a variety of process tasks -- such as moving files and folders, scraping data from the web, logging into applications, entering data into forms, etc.  (Those tasks probably seem mundane, and that's part of the point!)  Here's an example of a few tasks in accounting that could be automated:

Benefits of RPA

Here are some of the benefits that we achieve using RPA:

• Saving money – fewer resources are required to do the same work
• Reducing errors – humans tend to make more mistakes
• Avoiding unnecessary steps – machines only perform the tasks they are given
• Working around the clock – machines don’t sleep
• Improving morale – staff can do more meaningful, less monotonous work

Process Improvement > Process Automation

All processes have waste -- or things that do NOT add value for the end customer.  (As an example, our process might include unnecessary approvals, which can cause delays.)  Given that, before we spend time and money to automate a process, we should first seek to understand and improve that process.  It is much better to eliminate process steps than to automate process steps.

Tool Demonstration

There are a variety of RPA tools in the market.  This video demonstrates one of those tools -- UiPath.  In this example, the bot automates a process used by a company's IT department to prepare equipment agreements for employees when they issue company laptops.  (The equipment loans are documented in a spreadsheet, which is used to populate and e-mail individual PDF files.)  As a note, other than pressing "run" in the tool, all other actions in the video are performed by the bot.