Wuzzat?
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Jobs, or not
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Help Support House Repair Talk:
Having worked in factory automation my whole life I have seen quite a few changes over the last 40 years and also the attitudes of the workers and the owners. In the beginning of my career it was actually the end of the era of American industrial revolution I think. There was still a strong desire to grow and employ and make jobs for consumers that would in turn make a demand for products.
Automation then was more about quality than it was replacing workers and making things affordable for the average man. It was an exciting cycle to see.
We had hundreds of people doing things like time keeping and payroll that now are automated that was some of the first things to change, and become high tech. the internet then let them happen in other places and transportation allowed whole factories to be in other places with cheap labor. One of the funny things I remember is being in a meeting about outsourcing an automated process to Mexico to get in on cheap labor. I pointed out the only labor we had was people repairing the machines. I was told and that’s why it’s moving. We tossed out a state of the art process and implemented a 50 year old labor intensive process because labor was 25 cents per hour in Mexico. Once down there in a brand new factory right out of 1930. The quality went bad and the answer to that was human error so we rebuilt the automation down there. The next problem is the people there at that time didn’t have the skill sets to maintain the equipment so we would fly the people we replaced here back and forth.
Lately I have been to a couple dairy farms to look at their robotic operations milking cows and feeding calves, were two areas that really impressed me. Each time I ask the owner why they made the change was it profit driven and they said no it was driven by no one wanting to do that type of work anymore. It’s hard work, long hours and the pay can only be so good and still stay in business. They said there are only two ways to go one is import labor from central America and about half the farms have done that, or to automate. Once they automated they found all kinds of benefits with robots. Most had to do with sanitation and things along those lines. The robot washes itself after each cow. The computer know everything about every cow and some get milked say 3.7 times a day and others 1.6 times per day. They are weighed and measured and output is measured and rations adjusted. Milk production and quality go up and vet bills go down. No one calls in sick. The list goes on.
I actually can’t think of a tougher job to have a robot to do than milk a cow. So many variables. After seeing how well they work I don’t see much they won’t be able to do.
What are all these people going to do? Is the question. Where is the population growing the fastest?
Automation then was more about quality than it was replacing workers and making things affordable for the average man. It was an exciting cycle to see.
We had hundreds of people doing things like time keeping and payroll that now are automated that was some of the first things to change, and become high tech. the internet then let them happen in other places and transportation allowed whole factories to be in other places with cheap labor. One of the funny things I remember is being in a meeting about outsourcing an automated process to Mexico to get in on cheap labor. I pointed out the only labor we had was people repairing the machines. I was told and that’s why it’s moving. We tossed out a state of the art process and implemented a 50 year old labor intensive process because labor was 25 cents per hour in Mexico. Once down there in a brand new factory right out of 1930. The quality went bad and the answer to that was human error so we rebuilt the automation down there. The next problem is the people there at that time didn’t have the skill sets to maintain the equipment so we would fly the people we replaced here back and forth.
Lately I have been to a couple dairy farms to look at their robotic operations milking cows and feeding calves, were two areas that really impressed me. Each time I ask the owner why they made the change was it profit driven and they said no it was driven by no one wanting to do that type of work anymore. It’s hard work, long hours and the pay can only be so good and still stay in business. They said there are only two ways to go one is import labor from central America and about half the farms have done that, or to automate. Once they automated they found all kinds of benefits with robots. Most had to do with sanitation and things along those lines. The robot washes itself after each cow. The computer know everything about every cow and some get milked say 3.7 times a day and others 1.6 times per day. They are weighed and measured and output is measured and rations adjusted. Milk production and quality go up and vet bills go down. No one calls in sick. The list goes on.
I actually can’t think of a tougher job to have a robot to do than milk a cow. So many variables. After seeing how well they work I don’t see much they won’t be able to do.
What are all these people going to do? Is the question. Where is the population growing the fastest?
C
Chris
Guest
I agree with people not wanting to do the work anymore. I own a pipeline company and much of our work is manual labor and swinging a shovel all day. Everything is heavy and very little is fun. I for the life of me can not find guys who want to do this type of work and the ones I do find somehow think that they need to be paid well more than college educated people because the work is hard. For a job that paid 10 bucks an hour ten years ago people want a minimum of 20 an hour for and our prices have gone down and not up in the last 5-10 years.
I have a 17 year old nephew that has never had a job in his life. His mom keeps asking him to go get one and every time I see a help wanted add or sign I let him know. He has not applied at a single place and says it is because those places are crappy jobs or he heard the don't treat their employees good. I just want to slap him. I started working manual labor at 13 years old, dropped out of high school to work and pay bills, I did numerous jobs that sucked but it was what we had to do to survive.
Our society is definitely what is pushing robots and outsourcing work. Everyone wants that desk job now and no one wants to work in a warehouse or do manual labor. Look at how many college graduates are living with their parents searching for that great job!
I have a 17 year old nephew that has never had a job in his life. His mom keeps asking him to go get one and every time I see a help wanted add or sign I let him know. He has not applied at a single place and says it is because those places are crappy jobs or he heard the don't treat their employees good. I just want to slap him. I started working manual labor at 13 years old, dropped out of high school to work and pay bills, I did numerous jobs that sucked but it was what we had to do to survive.
Our society is definitely what is pushing robots and outsourcing work. Everyone wants that desk job now and no one wants to work in a warehouse or do manual labor. Look at how many college graduates are living with their parents searching for that great job!
Wuzzat?
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He's probably right - but unless he wants to live on a desert island by himself or sponge off of others, he should learn to deal with people. It can be nasty but it is necessary.
We are not made to do desk jobs. We are made to be physically challenged, and this book
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812979680/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
goes even further than that.
Eventually, like on Star Trek, we might evolve to be just brains in life-support vats or beings made of pure energy but I'm not sure I want to be around when that happens, and I won't be.
BTW, NASA used to have colloquiums where experts came and talked.
One of those guys said that the 'people' who go to the stars will not be carbon-based (us), they will be silicon-based (i.e., computers). Computers don't care that it takes over four years to get to the nearest star and they are already hardened against the radiation these spacecrafts will be seeing.
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nealtw
Contractor retired
Nasa, should hire teenagers they can sit around for four years and get a suntan too.
Wuzzat?
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People can get lucky and get one of these
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=sinecure&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Elizabeth Ray had one.
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