The changing nature of work resulting from automation in manufacturing technology
- Increased use of AMS results in the nature of work changing
- Information revolution makes many industrial jobs redundant or in requirement of upskilling.
Positives and negatives of AMS in relation to the nature of work
| Positives |
Negatives |
| Dangerous or undesirable jobs can be performed by computers. |
High capital expenditure |
| Lower margin for error, more precision |
Deskilling of workers |
| Higher production rates |
Loss of job leads to loss of moral in workers, leading to bad habits such as substance abuse. |
| More efficient use of materials |
Loss of high level skills in intimate knowledge of certain fields. |
| Reduced factory lead times |
Workers become more easily replaced |
| Reduced workweeks for humans |
|
| Better product quality |
|
The advantages of semi-automation by utilising skills of people which leads to job satisfaction
Semi-automation is a combination of humans and machines working together to perform a task. For example, a inspector checking foods as they move along a conveyor belt and throwing out the spoiled ones.
Flexibility → The ability to change or compromise: the ability of workers to respond to change.
- humans are much more flexible than machines because they can think for themselves and adjust to situations i.e. a certain machine is broken, humans can replace the role of the machine
Common sense → good judgement concerning practical matters (semi-automation, workers can see problems.
Ingenuity → The quality of being clever, original and inventive
- finding solutions to problems i.e. a machine is broken, humans can find a way to fix the machine or simulate the machine’s job whilst it’s getting fixed.
Positives
- Job Satisfaction
- Originally seen as a threat to human jobs.
- However, it lets humans take part in the manufacturing process.
- Lets humans perform tasks that they’re good at, letting giving them higher job satisfaction.
- Higher pride of work, higher interest in what they’re doing.
- Flexibility
- While machines built for AMS can only perform one task at a time, semi-automated systems can perform a wide-range of tasks.
- Many factories are multi-skilling their workers by giving them experience in a wide range of jobs, increasing involvement and engagement in work.
- Helps create adaptable workers who can work different tasks if conditions change in manufacture.
- Benefits of job satisfaction.
- Example: power outage: humans can adapt to the situation and look for cause of the outage / or perform other tasks that don’t need power supply.
- Common Sense
- Humans have common senses which machines lack.
- The common sense of humans can help prevent problems, as they can foresee things that have not happened to a certain degree.
- Example: an object falls off a conveyor belt and a worker picks it back up, places it on
belt so that it can continue through the processes.
- Ingenuity
- Humans are good at problem solving; a characteristic machines cannot match.
- Humans play an important part in making management decisions within AMS environments.
- Human workers have the ability to see solutions to problems which sophisticated software cannot.
- Humans are able to think creatively and come up with solutions which can be easier to implement than if computers dealt with them.
- Example: if a machine breaks down and ceases to operate its conveyor belt; human workers can form a transport line.
Negatives
- Humans experience factors such as stress and tiredness which may lead to errors in production.
- Instead a micro-processor and an actuator is used to perform extremely intricate tasks repetitively without stopping.