The Orchestration Gap: Why Process Automation Stalls in Operationally Complex Industries

Abstract

While AI systems increasingly master individual tasks, end-to-end process automation continues to stall in operationally complex industries. This work characterizes the “orchestration gap” — the distance between task-level AI capability and the process-level orchestration that real operations require — and analyzes why automation efforts break down, offering a framework for understanding where and why human orchestration remains essential.