Determine operational methods
Little of this can be handed to software today.
Software can assemble the case and recommend an answer, and that is genuinely useful. The decision stays with a person because someone has to be accountable for it. Treating the recommendation as the decision is how automation projects fail.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Judgment, authorisation and strategy |
| Jobs that do it | 13 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Generalist agents, Models and routing |
| O*NET activity | Making Decisions and Solving Problems (4.A.2.b.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 13 occupations that perform it.
- Select aerial photographic and remote sensing techniques and plotting equipment needed to meet required standards of accuracy.
- Determine most effective arrangement of operations such as mixing, crushing, heat transfer, distillation, and drying.
- Determine means of integrating radio frequency identification device (RFID) into other applications.
- Plan and establish sequence of operations to fabricate and assemble parts or products and to promote efficient utilization.
- Apply continuous improvement methods, such as lean manufacturing, to enhance manufacturing quality, reliability, or cost-effectiveness.
- Determine appropriate methods for fabricating and joining materials.
- Establish or coordinate the maintenance or safety procedures, service schedule, or supply of materials required to maintain machines or equipment in the prescribed condition.
- Select locations and plan underground or surface mining operations, specifying processes, labor usage, and equipment that will result in safe, economical, and environmentally sound extraction of minerals and ores.
- Specify and supervise well modification and stimulation programs to maximize oil and gas recovery.
- Develop standard operation procedures and quality or safety standards for solar installation work.
- Determine procedures and instructions to be followed, according to design specifications and quantity of required materials.
- Develop or implement programs related to the environmental impact of engineering activities.
- Select material quantities or processing methods needed to achieve efficient production.
- Select or develop mineral location, extraction, and production methods, based on factors such as safety, cost, and deposit characteristics.
- Select or devise materials-handling methods and equipment to transport ore, waste materials, and mineral products efficiently and economically.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for judgment, authorisation and strategy, and what it costs.
There is nothing here worth buying beyond a good assistant. Software assembles the case and recommends an answer, which any $20 assistant already does; the decision is yours, and no product on this page changes that.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Generalist agents
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
13 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Architectural and Civil Drafters
- Cartographers and Photogrammetrists
- Chemical Engineers
- Electro-Mechanical and Mechatronics Technologists and Technicians
- Industrial Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Industrial Engineers
- Manufacturing Engineers
- Materials Engineers
- Mechanical Engineers
- Mining and Geological Engineers, Including Mining Safety Engineers
- Petroleum Engineers
- Radio Frequency Identification Device Specialists
- Solar Energy Systems Engineers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Determine operational methods or procedures”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.