Today it would be hard to imagine a working day without a computer. In case of blackout it’s same to pack you bag and go home. Althought you wouldn’t be working with computer all the time you would need it time to time. Most of the communication with clients is kept by email. This is good and bad thing at the same time. Sometimes it feels that with email relationships are more shallow than they would be in phone. On the other hand, history of confersations is kept online and you can check what was agreed. And you don’t have to rely on each others memory. When I was a kid my father worked for Nokia as an computer specialist. I was under school age when my father quit his job for Nokia and started all-day farming. Because of my fathers working history digitalization came into our house earlier than in average home. We allways had computer in our house and my father had cellphone. We kids got familiar with those in very early stage. Regardless to that I get good laughs about my reaction at highschool age. I remember how my good friend got to know american boy on holiday and they kept in touch by email. My own reaction was a bit amused because my friend tried to keep calm. And for me whole idea was just ridiculous. Back in those days I wouldn’t believe that today I will handle most of my contacts by email. Also other social medias have rised to support email, they are providing channels to spread easily knoledge and other wanted info.
We have family owned farming company with 40 employees. I could claim that for an farm we use more than average farms digitalization on daily basis. We use electronic working time records, and that info is linked to salary programs. Sales are made eletric and that info is linked to storage and material database. We use both commercial and self developed programs.
In food manufacturing traceability is mandatory and statutory. In our company whole chain from field to customer is digitalized. Electric field cards are kept, every stage of field work is recorded and bets (vertilizers, seeds, etc) are recorded and total value of field is calculated. Tractors and their machinery are GPS-guided and controlled for better efficiency. Also tractor’s fault codes are digitalized. They can be read online by factory and support is provided straigth from factory engineers. During harvesting season all in coming loads, tractor trailers and truck containers, are boxed and labeled individually. With this label raw material is processed through whole chain from storage to customer package. All data is digitalized and traceable through print in customer package. We use also robotics in our company. Robot’s are used for work that is hard for employees, for example palletizing wich reguires speed, precision and heavy lifting. In future amount of robotics will rise. Farming work is often hard and employees position will change from doing to supervicing. In future big farms will also start using drones, usage of drones in farming is under research as we speek. During summer time monitoring of fields takes huge amount of time every day. We believe that drones will reduce time used for field monitoring and also they will give more data about fields. In future we also believe that automated tractors will arrive on our fields. We have allready seen those in promotion videos.
So many things have been digitalized in our company so the risks are also higher. Malfunctions, destruction, temporary offlines or blackouts will affect and make production impossible. Because of programs we use are web based or online, effecting to those on purpose is possible. Once we start to use digitalization we have to hand over a lot of information about our company and ourselves. We put ourselves and our company into vulnerable position in totally new kind of way. Hacking into companies databases is happening all over the World and our also own privacy is endangered. There are parties in world wich are trying steal personal identities or to achieve benefits by breaching into databases or programs or companies digitalized infrastructure. Enlightened digitalized end user will have to be aware of this kind of threats. Company’s data security has to up to date constantly and handing over of your own personal information has to be well premeditated. You can protect your own identity by using strong passwords and by not handing them over and by changing passwords often.
Affects of new Data Protection Reform can be seen in online transactions. Companies are informing about changed law and about their effects on Company policies and usage of data about you. Companies are changing their online rules and relations and you have to agree them site by site. Because of new Data Protection Reform we had to update our personnel management programs also in our Company.
In future keep your company and yourself safe. Of course digitalization will help also in everyday life not only at work. Propably my life would collapse with out Erkki, my dear gardener, named by my famous deceased neighbour. Erkki has taken care of my garden more than ten years. Couple of years ago his good friend Imppa also moved to our home, she has been my loyal servant after that and I really love them both 🙂
Here you can see Erkki at work. He has lot of work to do with lawn after a winter break. https://youtu.be/u-7CpNYBTYk
I read and commented the following blogs:
https://anniinastudyingyamk.wordpress.com/digi-society/
https://lemmylehikoinen.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/welcome/comment-page-1/#comment-2
Elina in Digitalized Working Environment 