Tag: productivity

Automation will end the dream of rapid economic growth for poorer countries

Automation will end the dream of rapid economic growth for poorer countries

Humanoid robots working side by side with employees on an assembly line at a factory. Photograph: Issei Kato/REUTERS For a long time – at least since the economic emergence of South Korea in the 1960s – many low-income countries have been able to achieve rapid economic growth through industrialisation.

The process usually starts with low-end manufacturing (apparel, footwear, plastics) and entails large numbers of workers moving from low productivity smallholder agriculture to high productivity export manufacturing.

Industrialisation has helped to drive an unprecedented convergence between rich and poor country wealth levels. By the early 2000s, 83 developing countries were achieving growth […]

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 […]

Buddhist Economics: Economics as if People Mattered

Buddhist Economics: Economics as if People Mattered

Economics Should Be About People, Not About Wall Street

By John Lawrence In Buddhist economics there is the concept of “right livelihood.” Work is considered an essential component of human life just as play and leisure. Work of a craftsmanlike nature, work which is satisfying–not work that is stultifying, of an assembly-line nature. Work that nourishes the soul; this kind of work results in right livelihood.

By the same token, there is “right consumption.” This is as contrasted with the unlimited consumption advanced Western societies and pushed on their citizens through advertising and other means in order to have […]

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. […]

Uber will wipe out skills not jobs

Uber will wipe out skills not jobs

Uber’s announcement to add self-driving cars to its usual taxi services in the United States is as unexpected as it is indicative of the automated future of the sharing economy. Governments should limit their efforts to regulate the rapidly-evolving sharing economy and instead focus on developing relevant skills. Ride-hailing app Uber recently announced a pilot project testing the use of self-driving cars in the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The announcement was quite unexpected since the technology of automated passenger cars is not even close to hitting the markets. There are major technological flaws to be resolved and regulators have […]

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 […]