Automation is such a useless word. It can mean "no human in the loop" but is can also mean "human pushes this button and machine works" and also "all I have to do is frobnicate the urbanizer, input the result, doublecheck the nitifier, push the button, and then the machine does the rest!".

The Toyota quote is clearly skewed towards industrial production, where the word is a little more useful though. But other times, a simple process without human involvement might very well be the cheapest and easiest to start with too.