Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, and previously worked in a plant. Any opinions are my own.
Besides all the larger questions of politics and automation, it really awesome to be part of a team that builds 1000 vehicles a day. Seeing them roll off the end of the line never stops being cool. In IT, your project may last for months and you only see small changes happen slowly over time. In the plant you see parts come together into a complete vehicle over the course of a day.
In IT, if a site or service is down, you know it's a problem, but in manufacturing if the line stops you can see hundreds of people just sitting there.
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People talk about automation like it's new. Automakers have been automating from the very beginning. Designing and building cars is a big job. Designing and building the machine that builds the cars is also a big job. The machine that builds the cars is made of suppliers, trucks, railroads, robots, conveyors, information systems, and yes, people.
Line workers look like people to you and me, and they certainly are people; but to the machine that builds cars they look like extremely capable but slightly inconsistent robots.
You simply shouldn't believe the talk about automation. Most people don't even know what they are talking about. What do people think Chinese workers do? Mr. Marsh is right, it is about trade. If you can make something where workers are paid peanuts and have little, throughout the entire supply chain, without any penalties why wouldn't you? (except the obvious moral implications and long term effects).
What people really don't get is that hyper-automation, when you barely need workers at all, isn't going to come from the West. As we soon don't have anything to automate anymore. Most people here, including most engineers, are in the service sector.
Automation isn't all or nothing. It's a progression. That's what I was trying to say. Automation began with the assembly line, interchangeable (uniform) parts, and specifications.
There are two ways to save money on manufacturing: outsourcing to cheaper foreign workers, or automation.
Until recently outsourcing was the cheaper of those two options. That leads people to blame outsourcing for job losses. However, if automation had been cheaper at the time, it would have been more prevalent and probably would have taken the blame instead of outsourcing.
At some point automation will be cheaper than manufacturing in Asia, and then Asian factory jobs will disappear as the American jobs have.
Comments
Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, and previously worked in a plant. Any opinions are my own.
Besides all the larger questions of politics and automation, it really awesome to be part of a team that builds 1000 vehicles a day. Seeing them roll off the end of the line never stops being cool. In IT, your project may last for months and you only see small changes happen slowly over time. In the plant you see parts come together into a complete vehicle over the course of a day.
In IT, if a site or service is down, you know it's a problem, but in manufacturing if the line stops you can see hundreds of people just sitting there.
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People talk about automation like it's new. Automakers have been automating from the very beginning. Designing and building cars is a big job. Designing and building the machine that builds the cars is also a big job. The machine that builds the cars is made of suppliers, trucks, railroads, robots, conveyors, information systems, and yes, people.
Line workers look like people to you and me, and they certainly are people; but to the machine that builds cars they look like extremely capable but slightly inconsistent robots.
You simply shouldn't believe the talk about automation. Most people don't even know what they are talking about. What do people think Chinese workers do? Mr. Marsh is right, it is about trade. If you can make something where workers are paid peanuts and have little, throughout the entire supply chain, without any penalties why wouldn't you? (except the obvious moral implications and long term effects).
What people really don't get is that hyper-automation, when you barely need workers at all, isn't going to come from the West. As we soon don't have anything to automate anymore. Most people here, including most engineers, are in the service sector.
Automation isn't all or nothing. It's a progression. That's what I was trying to say. Automation began with the assembly line, interchangeable (uniform) parts, and specifications.
There are two ways to save money on manufacturing: outsourcing to cheaper foreign workers, or automation.
Until recently outsourcing was the cheaper of those two options. That leads people to blame outsourcing for job losses. However, if automation had been cheaper at the time, it would have been more prevalent and probably would have taken the blame instead of outsourcing.
At some point automation will be cheaper than manufacturing in Asia, and then Asian factory jobs will disappear as the American jobs have.