Automation — Creator or Exterminator of Jobs?

Well, I'm employed designing, and fabricating Automation equipment, and it takes a lot of bodies/heads to design/fabricate/install a piece of equipment. So it might be a one time (per job) employment of say, 10-15 people to replace a long term position or two (factory worker) doing manual labor.

Once you factor in all the vendors required to build a unit, and the people working for them, the totals add up. But you don't really see the impact that the business from one vendor selling a switch, might add to the overall project. When you multiply all the vendors together, you end up supporting a vast number of jobs indirectly. But the only ones you ever see/hear about will be the couple of guys who are out of work who were doing the manual labor.

I just finished an Automation job that replaced a couple of guys doing back breaking labor, lifting 200+ lb laminate beams by hand. The new system is more or less autonomous, but will still need an operator standing by, as well as a well trained maintenance staff to keep the machines up and running. It took 4 people from my company, another 4-6 from the company we hired to do the installations, and another 4-6 people from the end customer to program, fine tune, and operate the system.

In my opinion, we need to keep automating/building/being productive if we are ever to compete in the global manufacturing economy. Without automation at our sides as a country we will never succeed. You think China is at all concerned about replacing a few people with machines if it means they can sell more product at a even cheaper rate? We need to be competitive, and Automation (in my opinion) is the only way.

It depends upon in which part of the world you live. In developed countries there may be plenty of jobs due to industrialisation but in developing world employment opportunities are few except in agriculture and state offices. If a man loses his job he will find it very difficult to find a job suitable for his education/ability/salary expectations.

One of the drawbacks of automation is the type of labor that gets replaced and what new jobs are created. Unfortunately, the trouser-leg seam inspector is not going to be able to get a job as robot maintenance technician.

Anyone who says "Everyone can be trained new skills" clearly has not met the broad spectrum of humanity in the world.

But even the unskilled have to eat.

I've worked in the factory Automation field for 20 years. Many automation projects I worked on were justified solely on the human labor replaced, so jobs were eventually lost. However, in developed countries like the US and Europe the increased production efficiency from automation can often prevent entire manufacturing facilities from being moved to "better cost countries" ( a term coined by one of my former customers), so some jobs are retained.

Also, let's not ignore the fact that some modern products can only be made cost effectively by machinery. In other words, automation makes some jobs possible.

As an industry, the impact of direct employment in Automation is probably small compared to the total manufacturing employment. I've always thought of it as a supporting industry along with component level suppliers.