Automation War Stories

I like the 'project creep' mentioned in #2 Us humans have to deal with that too.

Del

That is a door buster,

A company that contracted me to help salvage their existence, because the engineers at the time basically threw the automation together without not once considering if it was feasible or not, that company is now out of business.

And telling the owner this

It's putting too much trust (there is another reason that I did not state) in having highly educated engineers, with no practical sense, misapplying this technology.

And that company that went out of business, I was able to salvage enough by bringing a new product line that preformed that it was able to sell its good will, and the new product line.

How about poor training of operators, a great system is only as capable as its operators. They may be automated but someone has to service, program, change programs, load specialty items, do engineering quals, anything not regularly done or cost effectively done by the robot. Seen some good machines poorly optimised by their operators.

Or did I misunderstand one of Mr. Colemans ten listed?

Brad

It used to be that when systems were automated the operators were trained to be maintenance personnel, so that they could take care of maintaining the systems. That worked to eliminate lower paying labor and operator jobs and increased the need for higher tech maintenance positions offsetting the gains in savings from reducing forces. I never could understand the economies.

the operators were trained to be maintenance personnel

Here mechanics make a lot more than operators (5x last time I looked).

Techs fall somewhere in between. They are usually an operator good enough to do complex functions so are taught to be a tech. When I became a tech training was open to the point I was offered an engineering position. No clue now.

Happy holidays Used to be eyes couldn't spell engineer now i is one!

Brad

One common mistake is not providing a simple reliable OFF method in case it goes too far or does something unexpected or gets to be an irritant.

Other mistakes for 'self learning' types of technology is to preserve the memory of learned events , further providing an easy way for the user to erase learned behavior when it becomes clear that some learned beahaviors are not desirable (without having to reset all the other learned behaviors). A simple example would be if a robot vacuumer for example memorized a room layout but later when furniture is moved around it still tries shortcuts that no longer exist. etc