Even though most business owners seem to believe that automation is a relatively new addition to their potential toolkit, that's not really the case. Manufacturers, for example, have relied on automation since at least the 1970s. But there's a world of difference between the types of automation manufacturers have long used and what's available for businesses today.

Much of the difference comes down to the fact that people conflate automation and artificial intelligence when they don't always go hand-in-hand. There are, in fact, three distinct types of automation that businesses can use. And to help dispel some of the confusion, here's what they are and what they're each capable of doing.

Fixed Automation

In the manufacturing sector – and particularly in auto manufacturing – fixed automation is everywhere. It refers to automation that's preprogrammed to accomplish a specific task, using custom-built equipment to do the job. When you see footage of robotic welding equipment working on cars on an assembly line, it's fixed automation at work.

In non-manufacturing settings, the closest fixed automation analog is scripted automation. This typically refers to automation that's pre-arranged, and almost always manually invoked. For example, IT vendors use automated scripts to handle a variety of common tasks.

Fixed automation is useful for handling repetitive tasks that don't involve changing variables. It's not designed to be flexible. It's designed to take a sequence of steps and repeat them again and again without ever skipping anything or deviating from the plan.

Programmable Automation

Like fixed automation, programmable automation is used to accomplish repetitive tasks. But it's a bit more flexible. Programmable automation solutions don't use single-purpose equipment. That means they can be reconfigured to handle different tasks as the need arises.

In manufacturing, programmable automation is used in settings where more than one type of product is built on the same shop floor. Generally speaking, it sacrifices a little bit of speed in favor of additional flexibility. So, when a production run of one product completes, the same machines can switch programs and get to work on something different.

It's also the same kind of automation most non-manufacturing businesses are using today. It involves the deployment of a single RPA platform that end-users can program to accomplish a variety of common tasks. For the most part, programmable automation can't adapt to changing conditions on the fly and still needs human intervention when anything unexpected occurs.

AI-Powered Automation

Long considered the holy grail of automation technologies, AI-powered automation systems can operate independently. They need little in the way of pre-programming needed for the tasks they're given. Right now, there aren't many completely autonomous automation platforms. Solutions like IBM's Intelligent Automation do use AI to help businesses make better decisions and inform their RPA processes, but they don't operate on their own.

This is mostly because AI hasn't yet reached the point that it can always be trusted to take action completely on its own. For example, an AI today can look at jigsaw puzzles and figure out what it's looking at, and assemble the pieces. There's even an AI that was able to solve a Rubik's cube in a few seconds without anyone telling it what it should be doing beforehand.

But, just because an AI can figure out how to do a given task without any preprogramming, it doesn't mean it knows how to decide if it should do that task at any given moment. Take accounting processes, for example.

AI-powered automation is already sophisticated enough that it can read incoming invoices and pay them as needed. But in the real world, there's a variety of reasons a business might decide to slow-walk an invoice. An AI solution would need to be running the whole business to understand that kind of context. And the technology's not that advanced as yet.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, business decision-makers must understand these distinct types of automation before they can make informed decisions on how automation fits into their future plans. They have to know what each type of automation can do, and more importantly, what it cannot. The fact is that today's automation tools can be a boon to today's businesses when used in the right way.

But they're no panacea. With any luck, the descriptions above will help eliminate some of the confusion surrounding automation technologies. But bear in mind – the progress of automation development never stops.

That means what's true about automation solutions today might change by next week. That's the goal, in any case. But as long as those decision-makers dedicate themselves to staying current on the latest and greatest automation technology, they'll be able to choose the right tool for the right job every time.