doing something through of a system, device, etc. automatically. In addition, since the 1950s it was related to mechanical or electronic devices and allowed the replacement of people’s work, which has remained until today.

For Parasuraman et al., (2000, p. 287) automation refers to the total or partial replacement of a function, previously performed by the human being, and the level of application can vary, that is, if the process is slightly or highly automated.

In another investigation, Parasuraman and Riley (1997, p. 231) define automation as a concept that can change over time, under the conception that automation comes from a machine (usually a computer) and where the assignments of functions from human to machine will be transferred and will change over time.

There are several criteria regarding the roots of automation, for Sergio Parra (2014) dating back to very ancient times before Christ:

In the eighth century B. C., Homer, in his famous Iliad, already describes mechanic servants endowed with intelligence built by Hephaestus, the god of metallurgy. Between 400-350 BC., Archytas of Tarentum built an automatic bird. Between 262-190 a. of C., Apolonio of Perga invented a series of water-driven musical automatons. Ctesibio also built musical automatons, whose sound was created by the passage of air through various tubes.

For Macau (2004, p. 2) one of the first milestones that marked the history of automation is that “since 1960, information technology is introduced in organizations with the aim of automating repetitive administrative tasks (accounting, billing and payroll, mainly) ”transforming the organizational processes of the companies from that time until today. The next big step, taken at the end of the seventies, according to Rafael Macau (2004, p. 3) is the emergence of the concept of “Management Information System (MIS), an integrated information system that, based on a design global, includes both systems of automation of bureaucratic work and management information systems of the different management levels ”within an organization.

For Gerardo Tunal (2005, p. 196) automation has two origins that approximate the 1980s. The first when the statesman of the United States Census Bureau, Herman Hollerith, had created a computer that was capable of classifying perforated files, duplicate them and compare them, being able to encode population data to generate census statistics; and the second milestone, when in 1994 Howard H. Aiken, from Harvard University, created the first fully automatic and electronic calculator, the Automatic Sequence Control Calculator (ASCC for its acronym in English, Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator), with which there was possible to perform continuous operations previously programmed. Inventions that for the time kept a high value for the conditions and technological advances in which they were developed, the first has even been considered as a pre-computer.

Pablo Míguez, points out Coriat’s work “The workshop and the robot” where the passage of Fordism to the Post-Fordism is analysed, focusing mainly on the emergence of new ways of work, such as microelectronics and computer science, which would have led to a new wave of innovations, in the so-called “era of automation” and what would be the first stage of automation “(Míguez, 2008, p. 3).

What is evident is an automation that has been perfected and improved over the years to become intelligent and self-sufficient technologies through technological systems and equipment.