Farm labor is the best example today. Farm machinery, and the plans for new picking and packing existed for years, but only as it became less troublesome and cheaper to introduce, did machinery start replacing human labor, crop by crop.
The same has true for industrial production lines.
I love manufacturing. Some of my favor days were spent in real industry where things were made. There is little left in the US now. Today, all too many businesses that make nothing tangible call themselves an "industry."
Years ago, I was talking with a designer for a high-speed label applicator for an irregularly shaped container. The production line was to be fully automated at all points, except the final one. That end of the line was still done by manual labor. It was the task of placing the finished products into containers and properly arranging them on pallets for shipment.
My question to the designer was, why wasn't that last stage automated. His answer was fast and required no thought: COST.
The plans for working packing existed, but it was then cheeper to have done manually.
In that same decade digital robots emerged, and not long after, that production line became 100% automated.
There has been only one machine that inverted the need for more labor rather than less. That was the invention of the Cotton Gin. The labor then was slave, and the labor problems it generated were far too costly for us all. m/r
Momentum Machines Burger Robot - Business Insider
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| Hold the Onions |
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FROM Aug 11, 2014
A company called Momentum Machines has built a robot that could radically change the fast-food industry and have some line cooks looking for new jobs.
The company's robot can "slice toppings like tomatoes and pickles immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible." The robot is "more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce ~360 hamburgers per hour." That's one burger every 10 seconds.
The next generation of the device will offer "custom meat grinds for every single customer. Want a patty with 1/3 pork and 2/3 bison ground to order? No problem."
Momentum Machines cofounder Alexandros Vardakostas told Xconomy his "device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient. It’s meant to completely obviate them." Indeed, marketing copy on the company's site reads that their automaton "does everything employees can do, except better."
This directly raises a question that a lot of smart people have contemplated: Will robots steal our jobs? ...
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/momentum-machines-burger-robot-2014-8#ixzz3COeOK6Bc
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