Tag: productivity

42 percent of working Canadians at high risk of being replaced by automation, says study

42 percent of working Canadians at high risk of being replaced by automation, says study

If you are on the verge of graduating from high school and wrestling with what to do with the rest of your life, or re-training yourself for another job mid-career, a study by Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship located in Toronto, Canada and housed within Ryerson University may have an impact.

Their recent study , The Talented Mr. Robot: The impact of automation on Canada’s workforce says a staggering 42 percent of the Canadian workforce is at high risk of being affected by automation over the next 10 to 20 years, with over a 70 percent probability of this […]

How to automate work life in the virtual economy without compromising on quality

How to automate work life in the virtual economy without compromising on quality

iStockphoto Lately, new age virtually driven businesses have become all the rage. Everyone is talking about them.

But automation has nothing to do with being lazy, careless, or complacent. You can never fully automate everything, and even if you could — you should not. Nor does talk of a virtual economy immediately link to the cliche of a cheap, low-quality workforce in emerging economies desperate for dollars.

It’s unfortunate that some continue to focus on this narrative.Not long ago, people used to believe that to be successful, you had to have a swarm of employees and a swank brick-and-mortar office in […]

Automation and the Workforce [on hold]

Automation and the Workforce [on hold]

Throughout history, automation has had an enormous effect on the workforce, allowing fewer workers to do more, increasing efficiency. Robots were first used in the transportation equipment, chemical, and metal industries, leading to an increase in both total factory productivity and wages. The use of robots also increased labor productivity and value added from labor; in other words, each human worker was more productive and added more value to the economy than before the implementation of industrial robots. These gains in productivity and efficiency are huge economic drivers for automation. With basic automation of software development and testing coming […]

How digital manufacturing will shift production from the factory to your kitchen table

How digital manufacturing will shift production from the factory to your kitchen table

With the rapid pace of technological innovation, the need for greater market responsiveness, and the rising cost of labor in nearly all economies, many companies are revisiting age-old manufacturing strategies. They recognize there is a growing need to introduce innovative products faster to meet customer demands while maintaining aggressive cost and quality objectives. Traditional manufacturing approaches can no longer keep pace with this dynamic new consumer-driven age. Meeting these demands will instead require a complete reinvention to how we approach manufacturing, and this reinvention will need to unfold on a scale that amounts to a new industrial revolution. Welcome […]

Jobs for the robots: One in four human workers to be automated

Jobs for the robots: One in four human workers to be automated

Yeah, you can call it a collaborative robot for now, and work with it, but pretty soon it will put you out of your job

One quarter of business services jobs at risk of automation in the next twenty years, according to Deloitte business analysts

More than a quarter of jobs in the business services sector are at high risk of automation in the next 20 years, according to a report by Deloitte , the business advisory firm. This is largely a result of the falling cost of technology combined with the rising cost of labour.Of the 3,300,000 jobs […]

Automation and Disruptive Technologies Will Soon Replace Lower-Skilled Jobs in ASEAN

Automation and Disruptive Technologies Will Soon Replace Lower-Skilled Jobs in ASEAN

A new study by the ILO Bureau for Employers’ Activities examines how technology is affecting workplaces in five major sectors across the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the transformation that enterprises and workers can expect in the next decade.

The report on ASEAN in Transformation: How Technology is Changing Jobs and Enterprises found the potential for growth and employment presented by advanced technologies, such as additive manufacturing, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT), are considerable.

The report provides critical data on how millions of jobs are going to be impacted in the run up to 2025. However […]

Growth no longer means jobs: Inflexible labour laws, rapid technological change have caused employment generation to stall

Growth no longer means jobs: Inflexible labour laws, rapid technological change have caused employment generation to stall

Where are the jobs? This is the question Prime Minister Narendra Modi is repeatedly asked by his political opponents. One answer he has given recently in media interviews is that the jobs that are being created are invisible in the statistics: loans from the Mudra Bank are enabling self-employment, and as these micro businesses grow, they will add employees, one or two at a time. Hopefully, they will ultimately create millions of jobs in an economy that is releasing one million youth every month into the job market.

While creating a nation of micro-entrepreneurs is better than doing nothing, there […]

ILO: Low-skilled workers risk being replaced by advanced technology

ILO: Low-skilled workers risk being replaced by advanced technology

Asian workers at a garments production facility. Image from UN-ILO. MANILA – Some 56 percent of salaried workers in the Philippines and four other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries are "at high risk of displacement" due to advances in technology over the next couple of decades, a report of the International Labour Organization (ILO) revealed.

Based on a new study by ILO’s Bureau for Employers’ Activities, titled ASEAN in Transformation: How Technology is Changing Jobs and Enterprises, the potential for growth and employment presented by advanced technologies, "such as additive manufacturing, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT), […]

Robots are set to take the jobs of millions of Asian workers in the coming years

Robots are set to take the jobs of millions of Asian workers in the coming years

Workers at a garment factory in Vietnam In the next few decades, about 56% of all salaried workers in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam could be displaced by automation and advanced technologies, such as 3D printing. That’s the conclusion of an extensive series of new studies by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Mass-scale displacement won’t happen overnight, but it’s already in the works. Robots, for instance, are increasingly handling the labor previously done by low-skilled workers in industries such as automotive and electronics manufacturing. For governments and employers willing to educate and train workers for new, high-tech jobs, […]

White House economist: Don’t fear the rise of the robots (He’s right)

How much should we fear the “rise of the robots”? (And I mean this from the perspective of worker employment, not human survival.) In a speech today on artificial intelligence and automation, White House economist Jason Furman gives a pretty reasonable and defensible perspective. No, smart machines aren’t going to take all our jobs.

That’s not really the issue, as he sees it. Rather, “it is that workers will either lack the skills or the ability to successfully match with the good, high paying jobs created by automation.” In a short-run that could last decades, “not all workers will have […]