Turning the Lights Off on OEMs

I happen to prefer Fanuc automation.......................however lights out works to kill good paying jobs and eliminates skilled workers whom the manufacturing industry is desperately searching for now a days.

The reason the baby boomers are leaving the scene in droves is not because they want too, it's because the industry is so fickle you have no security in your job.....I mean that I have heard guys that are 3 months from retirement that get canned for some inane reason and are not allowed to collect the pension they have been busting their butt for.................I mean really why subject yourself to that?

Then on the other side everyone has been told to ignore those lowly blue collar jobs...go to college and make your fortune...........at Burger King.

I have been in product development functions for years and the biggest roadblock to automating parts of the job does not come from fear for unions or potential downtime issues.

The real road block is knowledge and daring to think different at the start of a project.

The amount of engineers capable of setting up workerless production is limited: most real problems in assembly processes are solved by those who do job, if it needs to be automated the engineers need to solve it upfront.

jhhassociates I agree with the "GARBAGE" statement. I have been in the automation business for 40 yrs and have worked extensively with Faunc products and many others. They ALL breakdown and 30 days is pushing the envelope for anything other than a "pick and place" robot. BTW, they all require routine maintenance and the harder they are pushed, the more maintenance they need. Take your car as an example: If you drive normal, accelerating reasonably staying around the speed limits, stopping gradually, and change your oil, coolants, belts, and hoses, a car will last maybe 300,000 miles. But, if you floorboard it to get up to excess speeds and slam on the brakes, the wear is tremendously accelerated. Don't do the maintenance, and its junk in less than 100,000 miles.

I've heard machinists called "Button Pushers" and "Trained Monkeys", but I can tell you a good machinist is one of the keys to a machine having a long useful life. They know the machine and understand their idiosyncrasies and limitations.

Competent maintenance personnel are key along with good training and proper tools.

Most often they are under paid, untrained, and do not have all the tools to do the work.

Personally, I work on machines worth HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars for a MULTI-BILLION dollar company. I have had some good training and some bad, but almost never what it should be. I have spent a lot of personal time learning on my own and for that, I get paid less that production machinists because I am considered OVERHEAD.

I have bosses who do not understand most of the tools I (& my co-workers) need so at times outside contractors are called in to do what we could do in house.

I can advise my bosses on what is needed, but the bonuses they get impair their ability to properly equip us to do our job, not to mention their indignation of listening to someone who does the work.

Many of the contractors are less competent, but "It comes out of a different budget".

It still hurts the bottom line regardless of whose budget it comes out of.

Having also been in business, I understand budget constraints, but the waste resulting from bad management decisions is MIND BLOWING!

True "Lights OUT" manufacturing of anything complex, is still a long way off!

From what I read in the article it is a bit more than "lights out", it's more like "lights off". My understanding of lights out manufacturing is that the machinists or programmers or both would have parts that can run unattended and are scheduled for night time production. Here are a few of my thoughts on lights out:

• A part that takes many hours to machine.
• Large amounts of stock removal.
• Thick cuts at slow speeds.
• Non precise parts that have large tolerances.
• Roughing work.
• Lower night time energy costs.
• Take advantage of the weather and turn off the cooling / heating.
• Part blanking.

The list is almost endless and works for a lot of companies but I don't believe that they leave the building for a month and then come collect the finished machine.

What about testing? What about a defective part that is in the stream, now they have 50 machines that need to be repaired before they can ship them. That now stops the entire line and the workers have to disassemble the finished machines and fix them.

What about quality control?

"Lights off" manufacturing may come to fruition, however you will never take the human element out of the manufacturing process completely!