Following on from last week’s article about robotics and manufacturing, we decided to delve into this topic a little more and see if robotics is a curse or a blessing in disguise?
When robotics is mentioned, people’s responses are mostly of fear for their jobs, that they will be replaced by a machine. Machines can perform jobs, quicker, more accurately and for longer hours with no breaks but what can they really do and what does this mean for the manufacturing industry?
Machines matching humans
Machines have been matching the diagnosis of human doctors and even grading high school essays. A teacher reads 10,000 essays in her career, whereas a machine can read millions her day. Humans cannot compete against frequent high-volume tasks.
It’s not all bad news, though. Machines need to learn from large volumes of previous data, and cannot handle things they haven’t seen many times before. This is a limitation, as they can’t connect concepts to solve problems that they have not previously dealt with. This must mean there is room for humans too.
Banking industry
When ATMs were introduced there was a huge fear that bank tellers would be replaced. In fact, in America, bank teller positions and branches increased. ATMs allowed for simple cash handling to be automated, but it also allowed tellers to perform more complex tasks. They had more time to focus on building relationships with customers, solve problems and introduce new products.
Farming industry
In 1900, 40 per cent of all US jobs were on farms. With the introduction of tractors, harvesters and other farming machinery, it’s now down to less than five percent. Due to productivity growth in farming, a couple million farmers can feed a whole nation.
Where to from here?
From the banking and farming industry, we can see how advancements in technology can affect industries in different ways. So, what happens to humans, when more machines and robots are introduced into the manufacturing space?
Robots are limited by what jobs they can do. Yes, they can do jobs of a repetitive nature and they can perform it in high-volume. However, they can’t do things like invent new technologies, solve new problems and build relationships with customers.
Curse or blessing?
As more robotic technologies are introduced, it increases the importance of human expertize, judgement and creativity. Automation allows us to do more work in less time, and for us to concentrate on the more complex problems and tasks.
Machines and robots take away the tedious and repetitive tasks, and free our time. They allow us to be creative, innovative, increase our productivity and grow our businesses to another level.
