The Future of Work
Walt Boyes
Industrial Grade Storyteller--Editor and Publisher at The Industrial Automation and Process Control INSIDER
Welcome to the INSIDER 4.0. The INSIDER has been on hiatus, but it is time to resume commentary on the world of technology and manufacturing. Amazingly, the same things are being discussed, studied, and argued over that were being discussed, studied, and argued over when we stopped publishing before.
In no particular order, here are some of those topics:
I am sure you can think of more, and when you do, please send them to me at?[email protected]?for the queue.
Brittle Systems
In this second year of the global Covid-19 pandemic, we are finding out just how brittle our systems really are. When millions of people die, or have “long Covid,” we start seeing just how important the “average worker” actually is.?
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I live in Western Washington State, where the ferries that are necessary to connect all parts of the Puget Sound area are being seriously affected by the lack of employees, and what happens when employees get sick. We are finding out that politicizing the simple act of vaccination can cause economic disturbances on the macro scale. If enough crew don’t show up because they have Covid-19, the ferry doesn’t sail. All the people who depend on the ferry to be timely, now have to figure out how to reschedule appointments, deliveries, holidays, and the like.
If your former workers are dead, or seriously impaired, or have been lured away by higher wages or a better opportunity, it is time to look at how your workers fit in your organization. One of the ways companies have used automation and human workers is to try to “automate” the human worker. They have done this by using the automation systems to integrate the workers. So the workers run a “program” that sets the tempo of work and the number of movements the human worker must make. There are few opportunities for the human to provide the “value added” that the human brain is designed to provide. And worse, the workers are treated as organic devices inserted into the system. The stories are legion of warehouse workers who must wear diapers because they aren’t allowed time for bathroom breaks.?
Now that there are more jobs available than workers in many parts of the world, it is going to become a necessity for companies to re-think the way they use human parts in automated systems.
This is an important issue for the future of work, and the future of manufacturing in general. Finding the answers to this is on parallel with Dick Morley and Otto Struger developing the programmable controller.
We will continue this discussion soon.
WALT BOYES is a principal with Spitzer and Boyes LLC. He is a Life Fellow of the International Society of Automation, a Fellow of the Institute of Measurement and Control, a Chartered Measurement Technologist, and a member of the Association of Professional Futurists. He also acts as Editor of the alternate history magazine,?The Grantville Gazette?and is Editor in Chief of?Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press. Walt is available for consulting and for speaking engagements both in person and online. Contact him at [email protected].
“What if?” Industrial fiction… GM CEO Roger Smith infamously first fantasized about the “lights out” factory in 1982. A pivotal tipping point in the Fourth Industrial Revolution happened in the early 1990’s when GM unveiled the first totally automated paint booth using ABB’s new FlexPainter 5500 robots and pioneering bell color cartridges. GM lauded the high quality, efficiency, safety and clean air improvements. However UAW leaders saw the total elimination of Union painters — and began a historic fight to stop robots from eliminating any more union jobs. As a result, auto makers began relocating factory after factory overseas to cut costs with cheaper labor instead of robots. “What If” the UAW didn’t stop the Robot Revolution in the 1990’s? “What if” Roger Smith had offered to pay a lifetime pension to every worker who helped GM install and teach a robot to replace his or her job? “What if” GM actually pioneered the “lights out” factory in the 1990’s — in a collaborative process with Union workers? “What if” Roger Moore produced a very different Industrial Science Fantasy movie about factories of the future?