Future of Manufacturing

It  is probably true that production line manufacture is not going to employ hundreds of school leavers with general skills in the way it did until perhaps half a century ago. A modern factory is full of semi- or fully automatic machines that do all the mundane stuff like putting screws in, packing things in boxes etc, that once was manual unskilled labour. 

That said, the development of products, and the setting up of those production lines, very much needs people, but it needs people with the right mix of skills, and the manufacture or customization of anything in small quantities (at relatively high cost) remains intensively manual, as there is a break even between the development cost and the cost to automate production.
  
As an example 20 years ago when I was involved in mobile phone production, when such things were made in Europe,  lines that made a new one every 15 seconds*, ran for 2 or 3 months non-stop and were then dismantled and re-configured for the next new model that had been developed while that was going on. 
 
About half the factory cost of each handset was sunk cost for all the development that took place prior to that point that was very much manual to produce the first  few 100 units the hard way.
Its not a new idea, and  not all areas of production are quite so racy at the cutting edge, and a lot of management models are not a good fit to it. 

There will be things like the production of the relatively few moulds you need for plastic injection that are simply never worth fully automating, but look shockingly expensive.

There are things that are likely to remain hard to automate - repairs for example, or farming with plants where every one is different, but with machine vision this can be partly done already. (when some one makes a robot that can drive to someone's house, diagnose and fix a blocked toilet and drive back again, I'll revisit that statement.)

Around AI is a lot of hype and bluster,  but increasingly having 'machines doing stuff', regardless of  if the software is really AI or not, is likely to remain the trend.

Mike.

* which meant that every process step had to take a multiple of 15 seconds - if it took longer, the task was subdivided until it didn't, or the line forked into parallel streams and then re-merged. 

Hello Mike:

If you look at the videos showing production lines that were used recently in China for making phones it wasn't too different from what was used 20 years ago.They just made the phones in much greater numbers.

As you are aware phones are designed to be assembled in a predetermined set order _put screws A then B  in then move to the next station.

Current manufacturing in China is in crisis, with large number of factories closing and large layoffs of low wage jobs, due to lack of orders.

Peter

 Ketan Varia , thanks for kicking off this discussion. I'd argue that the Economist article fails to reflect the reality lived by all of the hard-working micro- and small-enterprises that dominate our industrial estates because a scale model focused on least cost can easily miss the point. Three thoughts:

1. firstly, where does the value truly lie a value chain and is this value shared fairly between all the actors in a chain?
2. secondly, how do we measure value beyond just the economic benefit, what about the social and ecological value?
3. thirdly, how does our thinking on this value develop when we consider circular business models or doughnut economics?

Hello David:

Your comment number 2, that the value associated with the social and ecological impact should be considered in addition to the economic value led me to the following conclusion:-

"In today's society the owners (be they managers or stock owners) of a business have no social or ecological implied contract with it's employees!" 

In the mid to late 1800's industrial owners such as Cadbury (who were Quakers) created model villages for their employees, which were located adjacent to their factories (Bournville). They did this to provide a more stable source of healthy employees.

Even in late 1950's, when I worked for a large UK owned company, the employer still had a "watered down" implied social contract with it's employees.

With the destruction of large manufacturing factories in the next 20 years and its replacement with small micro and small-enterprises located in industrial estates I believe this social contract effectively disappeared.

Regarding my earlier Cadbury example- in 2010 the Mondelez Corporation took over the company with a hostile bid and then had a  big lay off of employees.

As this is a very complex subject, I may not have expressed all my thoughts in enough detail, but I hope you get an idea where my conclusion came from.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay Florida 

Hi Ketan, I read your post with both interest and trepidation.

Within my career I was 15 years in one of the worlds largest generator manufacturers and exporter.

While I welcome tech and AI advancement, what I have found throughout my career is the remarkable adaptability, problem solving on the ground with engineering skill learned and passed on from father to son and by which I mean physical skill with hands and mind, not just design on paper or computers and built through total automation and or robots/AI.

My fear is true skills knowledge and ability to work with hands will be to everyone's detriment in the not so long march to what some see as AI......topia.

Even with basics now as it is , how many can fix a puncture in a push bike wheel , re-wire a plug, drill a hole in a wall or even change a car wheel. 

I'm not exactly an oldy at 48 reminiscing of olden days gone by, the young are guided by what goes before them if all they see and know is tech who builds? repairs & fixes and maintains if all they know is keyboards?. 

With my own background and main career in electrical engineering, my father a welder all his life, I can weld, 1 uncle a joiner, I do my own joiner fitting kitchens hanging doors etc, other uncle a fitter/plumber,yes I can do plumbing work fitted bathrooms installed boilers, central heating wood burning stoves. 

What I try to highlight Is basics from one generation to the next that is being eroded and which for the most they'll be pushing forward in a world being reliant and dependent or others/tech for all .

There is irony in there somewhere that the further the world around progresses with tech and AI, the less individual life skill /ability/responsibility for self reliance which to my mind isn't a great recipe for ordinary workers for the future. 

That raises another point, that of 'hollow knowledge' where folk only 'know' what they can look up on the web.  You'd be a bit worried if that was your doctor ;-)

Actually I think folk who "can do stuff" without needing a youtube video to show them how,  are quite safe in terms of employment for the foreseeable future - my earlier comment about  a robot to unblock a loo is a bit tongue-in-cheek but the ability to make stuff work is if anything in shorter supply than ever.
As an aside I help with Scouts, and a large part of what we do is things like cooking on fire, how to build a shelter and general handy skills  like simple DIY and so on - and changes are very evident,  over the years, it now is remarkable how many 11 year olds have never struck a match, or have no idea how to wash up without a dishwasher. And they cannot hike as far as their equivalent could  20 years ago. It is a concern - as these are presumably the children of parents who are interested enough to send their children along, so you rather wonder what the rest might be like.

It strikes me that we are accidentally building a very brittle society, where it is all optimized and wonderful, until there is a power cut or the network is jammed and then it all falls apart as no body really knows what to do. 

Mike.

Hello Mike:

It should be noted that some things that one could fix years ago have now progressed to the point where you need special tools and test equipment to fix. As an example the latest automobiles (both electric and gas powered). 

Peter  

Totally agree, and heaven forbit no internet for them lol. the same i was brought cubs, scouts and BB, Duke of Edinburgh awards etc basic life skills and have to say devoted but strict parents. Anyway tech and advancements good losing skill sets bad news.  

*forbid 

Yes lines driven by takt time (I ever 15 seconds) give you the ability to create processes that flow.