Automation and the dumbing down of the work force

Automation has opened career avenues that didn't exist just a few decades ago. It has made manufacturing safer and more cost effective (though not always).

However, gone are the days when one entered a mold or tool and die shop and saw rows of knee mills each with a skilled and busy machinist with his own Kennedy tool box in front of it. Now one sees rows of CNC machines and an operator with a plastic tackle box of tools tending several machines. He does not have the skills of a machinist. Someone else writes the CNC program, someone else built the parts fixture, and someone else sets up the tools in the tool holders.

Two decades ago, that operator would have had to aquire skills he is no longer required to have. Automation opened an avenue for a career in manufacturing for the operator. But gone are the machinists.

The single greatest concern I have about the field of automation is that...

Soon, there will be nothing but programmers and machines to be programmed.

The classic economic system requires that there be workers, that get paid a decent wage, which then use those wages to buy products that are produced by other workers.

If we get to the point where we have nothing but automated machinery producing products, and but only a few programmers programming those machines, and a few mechanics maintaining each of those machines...

...we will get to the point where we have more products being produced, very efficiently, with... very few buyers.

But, wait... you say... there is always the "service providing industry"... as in... "Would you like Curly-Fries with that order?"

But then... if the guy on the customer-side of the counter doesn't have a job... how could he possibly buy anything... with, or without, Curly-Fries?

Long-term Capitalism works only as long as all potential players get to participate, fairly and reasonably, in the game!

Look what is happening right now...

Many previously perceived Third World countries are now in a boom period. A lot of their products are being provided by automated systems, as well as many, low-cost, manual-labor systems.

US Industry is dying. It can not be argued! Sure, we are introducing automation to a lot of industries to make them more competitive with the low-cost foreign markets... but at what expense? In doing so we are doing nothing more than reducing the total "buying-power" of our citizens.

People that don't make much always go to Wal-Mart! Why? Because they can afford the lower prices at Wal-Mart! And who makes the products sold at Wal-Mart? Not American workers!

And so, by shopping at Wal-Mart what economy are you REALLY supporting?

The local economy, where the Wal-Mart is located, is supported to a small degree... at least in terms of the Wal-Mart employees... you know, those poor saps that don't get a decent living-wage, nor any benefits to speak of.

The only ones that are making out, at least in the short term, are the ones that are taking the lubricant (money) out of the capitalistic-system by hoarding (greed).

I can't wait for the next response...

This and....

Many previously perceived Third World countries are now in a boom period. A lot of their products are being provided by automated systems, as well as many, low-cost, manual-labor systems.

Click to expand...

This is probably only partly true...I say this because I was in a "round table" meeting at work about a month ago with all the company "wheels" and the VP told us that in a lot of the plants we have in South America they have 3 or 4 people running 1 machine where we have 1 running 2 machines side by side. They can do this because they are only paying them about 8 to 10 US dollars a week. If a machine is mechanically or electrically not up to par they make it up in manpower.

Later...Todd

Terry Woods said:

US Industry is dying. It can not be argued!

Click to expand...

Sure it can. We produces more goods dollars wise then we have in past even when inflation is taken into account. US industry just does it more efficiently using machines instead of people.

Terry Woods said:

Sure, we are introducing automation to a lot of industries to make them more competitive with the low-cost foreign markets... but at what expense? In doing so we are doing nothing more than reducing the total "buying-power" of our citizens.

Click to expand...

Are you saying that just because you are a US citizen that you just have more buying power and those in other countries?

Terry Woods said:

The only ones that are making out, at least in the short term, are the ones that are taking the lubricant (money) out of the capitalistic-system by hoarding (greed).

Click to expand...

There must be a lot of stuffed mattresses.

As the standard of living rises in the third world countries so will the workers demands be on wages, health care, etc, etc. It happened in Japan years ago, its occuring in Mexico and Korea now (or was), so a lot of work is headed to China. This time around.

If there is one constant in this world its that things constantly change.

Automation definetly changes things. It improves productivity and quality. And it does displace workers. Mostly at companies making commodity products. It does, however, create service jobs where they are being used, and engineering and skilled shop floor jobs where the machines are designed and built.

I was going to wait a bit to see where this went, but what the hell...

I started out as a machine operator trying to put myself through college. I ran some CNC machines. One of the three machines was broken when I started and the small shop did not have the money to bring in someone to fix it and the workload was not so heavy that two machines could do the work with a little OT. I was a clueless kid hired to put a part in the fixture and push the go button. After a few weeks I took it upon myself to tackle the broken CNC machine. I got out the service books and followed the card swap procedure in the manual to isolate which axis had the problem. Then I switched cards with another machine until I moved the problem to the other machine. The boss was pretty impressed and next thing I knew I was servicing all the CNC machines in the shop. I learned how to program the CNC machines and pretty soon I was doing that. I didn't know the first thing about being a machinist, 'kerf' had never even occured to me, but a gnarly old machinist took me under his wing and mentored me through what it took to properly program tool paths and feed rates.

That experience is what steered me into control engineering.

The dumbing down of the workforce on the manufacturing floor is real enough, but the dumbing down of the overall workforce is an illusion. The abitious who would have become skilled machinists 30 years ago have moved on to a different skill set. Those guys have taken it to the next step, they became programmers and engineers.

Automation has opened the door for those who would have been in menial jobs to be in manufacturing jobs that are menail.

Automation is here to stay - and automation is what makes our economy strong.

The first round of automation created the 8 hour workday. The future is brighter, even for the dumbed down workforce.

Terry Woods said:

Soon, there will be nothing but programmers and machines to be programmed.

Click to expand...

So what you're saying is... we chose the right career path!... :site:



-Eric

Alaric said:

However, gone are the days when one entered a mold or tool and die shop and saw rows of knee mills each with a skilled and busy machinist with his own Kennedy tool box in front of it. Now one sees rows of CNC machines and an operator with a plastic tackle box of tools tending several machines. He does not have the skills of a machinist. Someone else writes the CNC program, someone else built the parts fixture, and someone else sets up the tools in the tool holders.

Two decades ago, that operator would have had to aquire skills he is no longer required to have. Automation opened an avenue for a career in manufacturing for the operator. But gone are the machinists.

Click to expand...

I don't think manufacturing has been dumbed down at all. Yes, some of the machine operators used to have some real machine tool skills, but that that wasn't really representative of the manufacturing workforce in general. If you go back in time to, say, 1970, the average factory worker had very few practical skills. In fact, many of the jobs were dreadful and monotonous.

I mean, today almost every lumber mill has some sort of sorting and stacking machine, but I remember when the stacking machines consisted of three or four guys with "size 46 coats and size 2 hats". Or how about the wollen mills (anyone with Franco-American ancestors knows what the wollen mills in the northeast were like). Aside from the set-up crews, almost all of the other jobs were as dumbed-down as they could get. Or how about any food processing plant? My mom worked in one for a couple of years in the 60's, and trust me, there is no way that those same jobs have been dumbed down today.

As for the future, it's kind of silly to think that there will be nothing but machines and programmers left. Right now it isn't cost effective, but it wouldn't really be a technological leap to have a higher level software write all of the control code based on cad drawings and a configuration database. It is already being down with CNC part programs and some stand-alone machines.

If anyone has citations for/links to scholarly journal articles on this topic, please post them here or PM me.

There are none so blind as those that will not see.

Without a sense of history, how can you know where you are relative to where you've been?


The population of the US is not decreasing. Except for the Civil War, I don't recall any period, in US History, when there was a net decrease in the population. Sure, there have been wars besides the Civil War. But the population was growing more quickly than the body-count was growing.

The point is, the population is ever-increasing.

There was a time when the US was more of an agricultural economy than a manufacturing economy. As manufacturing became the primary factor in our economy, a huge number of people left the agrarian economy to become part of the manufacturing economy. There were a lot of jobs. There were more jobs than workers. However, contrary to the classic economic model, the Rule of Supply and Demand did not apply to the workers and their salaries. They were paid dirt-wages. They worked in awful conditions. Some of those conditions still exist, in our country, to this very day; Coal Mining being the best example.

And, isn't it ironic that the first unionization efforts in this country took place in the coal fields. I don't mean unionization in terms of "guilds" or "crafts". I mean unionization in terms of the workers getting together, regardless of guild or craft, for the purpose of negotiating a halfway decent wage and tolerable working conditions.

Most miners at the time would go into the mines before sunup and wouldn't come out until well after sundown. If they ever saw the sun at all, it would have been on Sunday.

The efforts to unionize were baptized in blood. It took a good long time (about 100 years) before the mining industry finally started to become reasonable with their workers. There were changes for the better before that 100 years... but those were far from reasonable.

Back on topic...

There were a lot of jobs and poor wages. But, just about anyone that wanted a job could get a job. He might have to move around a bit, but jobs were to be had.

In terms of today's understanding of efficiency, very little of the work was done efficiently. However, a lot of people were working, a lot of wages were going into the "buying market". It was simply a case of, you can't spend money unless you have money to spend! (This was before credit existed in it's current form.) As long as people had jobs, with wages that exceeded their daily housing and food requirements, they had a few bucks that they could spend in the open market.

That was the beginning of the Great American Middle-Class. That was the backbone of America's growth in the early years of the American Industrial Age. That was also the Age of the Robber Baron.

Then came the bust of '29 (there were others before this, but this was far more devestating in it's effect on the general public).

All of a sudden, there were far more people looking for work than there were jobs to be had. Now, for some reason, the Rule of Supply and Demand did apply to the workers and their wages. If you wanted to work, you were lucky to get a job at all, and lucky to get those dirt-wages. Back to square-one for the workers.

Time goes on, World War II comes and goes. The returning soldiers found that jobs were not that easy to come by... again, too many workers looking for too few jobs. But, this time, the New Deal, pushed through by FDR, plus the GI Bill, made it possible for people to hang on until American Industry switched from a war-footing back to a civilian-footing. During that time, many of the GI's went to school. That was a very, very good thing for all! The thing to remember is that they couldn't have done that without the GI Bill! A lot of the guys that put us on the moon came from that crowd.

Time goes on... automation is becoming more of a serious endevour.

Assembly lines that were manned by a number of workers are now being manned by machines. A few specialized workers are added to the work force to build and take care of those machines. Meanwhile, the production line workers are out of a job.

And meanwhile, the population continues to grow. The ratio of jobs to workers is getting smaller.

Some of those that lost their jobs go to school... and learn how to build and/or program machines that will take the place of other workers.

More line-workers lose their jobs. And the population continues to grow.

Some say... What we need is a good healthy war to control this population growth! That will put things back to right!

Somehow... that just doesn't taste right, does it?

Now a days, instead of only installing a few machines to replace several workers, copmanies are shutting down the plant entirely and moving it overseas. The entire work force at that plant loses their jobs. They then start competing with others for the remaining jobs. The ratio of jobs to workers is getting yet smaller.

But wait... a new plant is opening! Maybe they have a bunch of jobs!

No... not a bunch... they have machines. They only need a few workers to maintain the machines. Well, at least some will get to work.

Meanwhile, the population continues to grow...

Many of those that are working are finding that they have fallen out of the Great American Middle-Class. That size of the middle-class is getting smaller... everyday. Those people find that their wages do not have the buying power it once did. Now they have to go to Wal-Mart... just to be able to afford what they need. The workers have to buy the same items that they used to make... from Wal-Mart... which is being supplied by the same company that moved overseas from the US. These workers can't affford to "Buy American" because they haven't got the wages to do so! And so... they dig themselves in deeper... It's like having to buy from the company store, where the cost of the basic necessities exceeds the wages paid... the worker owes his soul to the company store.

And the population continues to grow.

How many programmers can American Industry support?

Somebody said... "More and more of our imports are coming from overseas!" (Go ahead... guess who came up with that gem.)

A lot of those imports are automated machines.

I see a spiral... going downward. Unless we become involved in some really big, new, technological developments, we are on the way to Rome.

I guess I'm just a ****eyed optimist.

It is true that things aren't what they used to be, but then, maybe they never were. I too miss the gnarly old contruction supervisors that could do any job on the site with their own hands. I too sometimes worry about the fact that the skills of those old tool and die makers are disapearing from the industry.

But..... This isn't the first time in history this has happened. Look at agriculture. At the time of the American Revolution it took fifty people on farms to produce enough excess food for each person in the city. Now, one farmer feeds well over one hundred people. Never in the history of the world has so little of man's labor been devoted to getting sustenance as is now the case in the US.

The same process that has transformed agriculture is transforming industry - and has been for a couple of hundred years. What was Watt doing but improving productivity and putting horses and their tenders out of the mine pumping business? The Dutch enjoyed their 17th century boom because they had new systems of rigging that put a lot of sailors out of work because smaller crews could run the ships.

We are talking about productivity improvement here. The industrial revolution was surely not an unmixed blessing, but because of the productivity gains the standard of living has risen. That is progress. Over the long run of history the same thing has happened time and time again. And I, for one, think that overall it has been a good thing. I for one certainly don't want to go back to thirty years of stoop labor leading to an early grave.

Industry, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If there is a gap in needs, it will be filled. Will things change - yes. Will the dislocations be painful for some - yes. Will judgement of history be that the final result is better living for mankind - yes, I think so. So, when I indulge in nostalgia for the good old days, I remind myself that I would not go back to live in them!

Keep faith and do good work - I truly believe we are progressing mankind into a better future, though we may not know what it is!

The point is, the population is ever-increasing.

Click to expand...

That's an extremely simplistic way to guage an economy as dynamic as ours. People have been preaching the same story of doom since I can remember.

Well, the fact is that despite the increasing population, anyone who wants a job can find a job even today. There are tons of good jobs that go unfilled, and our unemployment levels are consistently very low. It's true that someone who is hell-bent on working in the textile industry may be out of luck, but anyone who is willing to adapt will always be employed.

Besides, population growth is a poor way to quantify worker supply and demand. Today's workers are working fewer hours during their lifetimes than ever before. People don't tend to make a lifelong career in something anymore, and I think we will find a lot of guys in their 50s retiring during the next decades (their grandparents probably worked into their 70s).

And yes, automation has made our factories extremely productive, but damn, there are a lot more factories now than there used to be. And, there is an exponential increase in the junk that people can buy. I remember in 1976 when buying a microwave oven was something very special, and you might save for a year. But now I can buy one for $29.95. Does that mean I'll save the other $100 I might have had to spend in 1995? No, I'll just toss something else in the cart while I'm at it. People tend to spend all of the money they have anyway, and factories will sprout up and produce stuff to meet that demand.

The US is very fortunate in that we cope very well with change. We'll be fine.

[sarcasm]
Can't the government fix it so that everyone in the world makes an above average income? To do this of course they also need to be above average in intelligence and have above average skills. Should be simple.
[/sarcasm]

At one point many people could perform all the tasks necessary to feed, house and clothe themselves and their families. The level of nutrition achieved, warmth and comfort achieved though was somewhat limited by our standards, but they did survive - otherwise we wouldn't be here. That era started to change as soon as the 'hunters' and 'gatherers' decided to seperate the tasks. As tasks were specialized more was produced by all than by each performing all of the tasks individually. Agriculture began enabling 'civilization' (literally - living in cities). Those not devoted to producing food could do other tasks (eg building the cities) more efficiently.

By specialization each worker can produce far more in the same amount of time. We have better nutrition, better houses (until they're flooded), and longer life spans, on the average. But we have given up (in most cases) the knowledge and means to perform ALL the tasks individually for survival.

I doubt that this situation will retreat to its former days barring some sort of world-wide catastrophe. There may be fewer highly skilled machineists, but just maybe we don't need as many highly skilled machinists. Should we put some aside in cold-storage awaiting Armageddon?