Tag: manufactur

Job Automation Will Cost 6% of US Jobs in 5 Years

Job Automation Will Cost 6% of US Jobs in 5 Years

Job automation will cost 6% of all jobs in the U.S. by 2021. That’s nearly 8.9 million jobs in five years. The 6% figure is according to a new report by Forrester Research . According to the study, the job loss won’t be uniform across all fields, industries and positions. However it also won’t be limited to manufacturing as it has in the past. Rather, Artificial intelligence (AI), robots, automation and machine learning will destroy vastly more than 6% of jobs in select industries like transportation (think driverless Uber) and trucking, customer service, logistics and consumer services. Jobs in […]

How Can Henry Ford Help Modern Manufacturing?

How Can Henry Ford Help Modern Manufacturing?

Workers on a Ford assembly line, circa 1913. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) Doing more with less is a common phrase in industry today. It seems like everyone is doing the work of two or three people either because they feel they have to, or they feel it’s necessary for job security. However, overworked employees may not be as focused. They’re also more prone to making costly mistakes and miss the social interactions and connections that lead to creative or innovative solutions. Is working harder and longer the answer to our economic problems, or a slippery slope that is causing […]

University receives $1 million grant to improve collaborative robotics

University receives $1 million grant to improve collaborative robotics

The envisioned intelligent material delivery system: a robot will sense when skilled workers need materials, and deliver them in advance. This will help reduce worker frustration, stress, and talent loss, and save approximately $1.7 million dollars an hour by reducing work stoppage problems, according to UC San Diego. Engineers at the University of California San Diego have been given $1 million to research how to improve the way robots interact with people in US factories

Laurel Riek, a roboticist at the UC San Diego, will lead a three-year, $1 million project funded by the National Science Foundation to help […]

Econometer: Will robots take SD jobs?

Econometer: Will robots take SD jobs?

New recruit "Pepper" the robot, a humanoid robot designed to welcome and take care of visitors and patients, holds the hand of a new born baby at AZ Damiaan hospital in Ostend, Belgium. Q: Given the trend toward more automated technologies, like self-driving Uber cars , do you think unskilled San Diegans will struggle to find work in the future? Phil Blair, Manpower

Answer: Yes

The lower your skill levels, the more prone you are to be laid off from your jobs due to automation/technology, outsourcing and irrelevant work. We all have a career manager, and it is us. […]

Selling free trade is a tall order. But Chris Bowen is doing better than Scott Morrison

Selling free trade is a tall order. But Chris Bowen is doing better than Scott Morrison

‘Arguing for more free trade while also pledging a crackdown on welfare and bemoaning the “taxed-nots”, as Morrison did, is just self-defeating.’ Photograph: Mal Fairclough/EPA Chris Bowen this week set out his plans for winning the fight against the rise of protectionism. It’s a fight in which those in favour of free trade have been shown over the past year – whether in the Brexit vote or the inability to counter Donald Trump – to have been completely inept. Among the best aspect of Bowen’s plan of attack is that he has realised one of the reasons for this […]

Automation Technologies and the Future of Work

Last year, McKinsey launched a multi-year study to explore the potential impact of automation technologies on jobs, organizations and the future of work.“Can we look forward to vast improvements in productivity, freedom from boring work, and improved quality of life?,” its initial article on the study asked, or “Should we fear threats to jobs, disruptions to organizations, and strains on the social fabric?”

Most jobs involve a number of different tasks or activities.Some of these activities are more amenable to automation than others.But just because some of the activities have been automated, does not imply that the whole job has […]

The Next Industrial Revolution

The Next Industrial Revolution

A “crisis of abundance” initially seems like a paradox. After all, abundance is the ultimate goal of technology and economics. But consider the early history of the electric washing machine. In the 1920s, factories churned them out in droves. (With the average output of manufacturing workers rising by a third between 1923 and 1929, making more washing machines was relatively cheap.) But as the decade ended, factories saw they were making many more than American households demanded. Companies cut back their output and laid off workers even before the stock market crashed in 1929. Indeed, some economists have said […]

Robots are after our jobs: what can we do?

Robots are after our jobs: what can we do?

Photo: The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images Will smart automation, intelligent software bots and brainy robots take away our jobs anytime soon?

Pose this question to any Indian working in a company where unions are strong, or to any Indian who has a government job, or to the majority of Indians who work in the unorganized sector—those who drive taxis, trucks pull handcarts, hawk goods on footpaths or are employed as maids—and you will, in all probability, be looked at askance or even dismissed as an uninformed prophet of doom.

The reaction may not be surprising in emerging countries like India, […]

Brunell: China betting on advanced robots

Brunell: China betting on advanced robots

Don Brunell China has a new industrial strategy which is capturing attention worldwide. It is striving to become an innovation economy using advanced automation, connected robots and artificial intelligence.

China intends to shake the image of just being a nation for low-cost manufacturing. Instead, it wants to be known for producing cutting-edge, reliable and high-quality products — even making robots.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, the Chinese are creating an “industrial internet” which gathers information and uses it across manufacturing networks, including suppliers and customers.Their robots are connected systems with advanced sensors, sophisticated software and actuators (devices which can […]

Labor Day 2016: More Automation, More Foreign Workers, Fewer Jobs for Americans

Labor Day 2016: More Automation, More Foreign Workers, Fewer Jobs for Americans

Labor Day is becoming a time of dismal reflection as automation technology continues its incursion into new places in the jobs economy. For example, self-driving taxis were rolled out for public testing in Singapore and Pittsburgh in August. A robot security guard was sighted in a San Francisco parking lot earlier in the summer. In California, the new $15 minimum wage has pushed fast food restaurants to replace counter workers with ordering kiosks . It was reported a few days ago that Walmart is cutting hundreds of accounting and invoicing jobs , which sounds like a software upgrade or […]