Why are Stuff on Production lines still produced by humans these days?

Andy From Sligo

Why are Stuff on Production lines and factory jobs still produced by humans these days and not by robots/machines?

Surely automated machines better than humans? - no days off sick , can work 24hours 7days a week without breaks - am sure there are other benefits than employing humans to work on a production line

darkpagandeath

Building the automated factories is expensive atm, Paying low wages to Chinese people or Indians for example is cheaper.

Poor Uncle Tom

Still need people to maintain, manage and quality control product, that's where most of the jobs are in production factories nowadays anyway. It isn't possible to do it economically without people.

listermint

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Why are Stuff on Production lines and factory jobs still produced by humans these days and not by robots/machines?

Surely automated machines better than humans? - no days off sick , can work 24hours 7days a week without breaks - am sure there are other benefits than employing humans to work on a production line

Don't worry people will be made obsolete fairly soon next 2 decades.

You'll get the dream.

Then we will have other wars to worry about in the west east south and north. Poverty drives war too. Eliminating employment fast tracks that.

Sound goal to have I suppose.....

professore

Machines break down, or don't work as expected.

Yourself isit

Humans are more flexible. Anyway assembly lines don't really do much work. The skill is creating the bits that need assembling.

Fr_Dougal

I'd imagine in 20 years time companies will be advertising that their products are partly made by humans, it will be like Fair Trade today.

Can't see automation machines being great consumers, race to the bottom for the economy.

ScumLord

It takes time to develop a fully automated production line. You literally have to think of everything because the robot won't improvise, if something a millimetre off where it's supposed to be it can stop the whole operation, or worse cause a problem that isn't immediately obvious and you make thousands useless parts. Then there's the massive initial outlay, the cost of maintaining them, specialists are expensive and not always immediately available in a crisis.

At the end of the day your putting huge amounts of time and effort into building a machine that can do a simple operation that a human can do. The human is still the ultimate factory floor machine, it can even do the job of two or three machines without months of investment.

SEPT 23 1989

It will be hundreds of years before they can fully do what we do so dont mind the guff Tomorrows World tells you

Dr Crayfish

If some jobs become obsolete, people will just find other things to do. The industrial revolution probably destroyed many crafts and trades but we still got by didn't we?

darkpagandeath

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

If some jobs become obsolete, people will just find other things to do. The industrial revolution probably destroyed many crafts and trades but we still got by didn't we?

False comparison, Job losses will spiral as there will be no jobs to replace the lost jobs. 1 AI will run a call centre that had 400 employees for example. Just imagine the job losses in the financial sector banking. Self driving cars boats trucks. A large data centre can run with about 5 people.

Dr Crayfish

darkpagandeath wrote: »

False comparison, Job losses will spiral as there will be no jobs to replace the lost jobs. 1 AI will run a call centre that had 400 employees for example. Just imagine the job losses in the financial sector banking. Self driving cars boats trucks. A large data centre can run with about 5 people.

Well people can always be kept busy. The idea of a living income for the unemployed could also be introduced.

Widdershins

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Why are Stuff on Production lines and factory jobs still produced by humans these days and not by robots/machines?

Surely automated machines better than humans? - no days off sick , can work 24hours 7days a week without breaks - am sure there are other benefits than employing humans to work on a production line

....No hairs in your food.

It's going to be a sad day when so many people find themselves replaced by robotics, though.

darkpagandeath

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

Well people can always be kept busy. The idea of a living income for the unemployed could also be introduced.

Aye, a job will be one a bonus if you can get one to the government living wage.

alias no.9

Fully automated production lines take a long time to design and build. Product life cycles are getting shorter and shorter, time to market is also a big determinant of the total revenue and profit that will be generated over the life of the product. Tooling that cannot be used across multiple product families and/or multiple generations of of similar products is often not economically viable to automate. Ironically, for many consumer electronics products, the most automated part of their product assembly lines will be the bit that packs the product into boxes at the end of the line.

Phoebas

professore wrote: »

Machines break down, or don't work as expected.

People, on the other hand ....

Dr Crayfish

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Aye, a job will be one a bonus if you can get one to the government living wage.

what?

Stravos Murphy

Who will take the horse to France then?

SEPT 23 1989

Stravos Murphy wrote: »

Who will take the horse to France then?

Number 5

md23040

With Robots and Ai set to replace labour more and more, inevitably there will be huge losses of income tax, PRSI receipts to government etc.

The EU and other countries impose import taxes from cheap labour ecomonies to balance competitiveness, therefore IMO there should be an sliding scale automation tax on company profits of up to say 40% for using Ai and robots. Otherwise where will the greed of more and more profitability end.

Stravos Murphy

md23040 wrote: »

With Robots and Ai set to replace labour more and more, inevitably there will be huge losses of income tax, PRSI receipts to government etc.

Ai as in artificial insimmation? is old fashion riding becoming a thing of the past too?

Phoebas

md23040 wrote: »

With Robots and Ai set to replace labour more and more, inevitably there will be huge losses of income tax, PRSI receipts to government etc.

The EU and other countries impose import taxes from cheap labour ecomonies to balance competitiveness, therefore IMO there should be an sliding scale automation tax on company profits of up to say 40% for using Ai and robots. Otherwise where will the greed of more and more profitability end.

We have Excel ... and a photocopier. How much automation tax should we pay?

Phoebas

Stravos Murphy wrote: »

Ai as in artificial insimmation? is old fashion riding becoming a thing of the past too?

Its all on computers these days.

andekwarhola

Technology for full automation isn't more cost effective than cheap human labour.

Yet.

L1m1tless

If nobody has a job, who will buy the stuff the AI is producing?

Stravos Murphy

L1m1tless wrote: »

If nobody has a job, who will buy the stuff the AI is producing?

They will have to improve the dole.

B.A._Baracus

Machines can't do everything. A lot of things require the human touch.

I was watching that Christmas food documentary on bbc1 last month and they were showing how to make yule logs in one example. It's still a worker who rolls two at a time on the conveyer belt. Imagine trying to get a machine to do something as simple as that? Just easier to pay someone.

Samuel T. Cogley

Birth rates in Europe are declining. Perhaps we'll stop immigration, populations will decrease ad we'll all be Doctors, Lawyers and Pilots living in a utopia of manual labour being done by robots.

So say we all?

Phoebas

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

Machines can't do everything. A lot of things require the human touch.

I was watching that Christmas food documentary on bbc1 last month and they were showing how to make yule logs in one example. It's still a worker who rolls two at a time on the conveyer belt. Imagine trying to get a machine to do something as simple as that? Just easier to pay someone.

Imagine no longer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jEinuCIjs

Samuel T. Cogley

Phoebas wrote: »

Imagine no longer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jEinuCIjs

What are those weird bipedal entities walking around?

coastwatch

Libertarian Kant wrote: »

What are those weird bipedal entities walking around?

Umpa Lumpas