[extheat]

Conversely, automation creates a clear and well defined workflow for completing a task. There is nothing to "automate" if there is not already a manual process to doing it. Sure, sometimes the automation you introduce can be an over-engineered solution that's more difficult to maintain (or just not work) compared to a human-done manual process. To that point I think a valid solution would be to make the process itself more automation friendly, if possible given your circumstances.

[kqr]

Yes. This is what Taiichi Ohno would call "standard work": well-defined processes intended to be executed literally, and evolved with and by the people who perform the execution.

Standard work is a great source of things to automate, but automation is not a replacement for it.