I agree
jdbrandt said:
I'd love to know if its just me, or if other professionals reading this website think the same thing.
My first job out of the navy was saw mill controls back in 1980. I think there were 700 then. Now there are far fewer saw mills and each that is left requires fewer people to run them. Before computers lumber was sorted manually on a green chain. This was hard work and very labor intensive. It required a peron for every few type of wood that needed to be sorted. Now it is all automatic and even the stacker makes nice pallets of lumber for the forklift operator to take away. There is usually still a person at the head saw but down stream the edgers, trimmers and canters are all pretty much automatic. The few people that are left are usually maintenance people or those that clear up the wood jam ( jack straws ) and get production going again.
Now that doesn't mean all these jobs have vanished. There are new jobs for those that write the PLCs, optimizer code, develop the scanners, motion controllers and networking etc. The problem is that these jobs require more brain and less brawn that pulling lumber on a green chain.
Note, pulling lumber on a green chain is extremely hard work when you need to pull 2x12s or 4x12s. It often takes two people. Green lumber is very heavy compared to the dried lumber you buy in the store. I know because every once in a while we had to get lumber from the end of the green chain an lug it up to the trimmer and sorter to do testing. I would hate to need to do it all day at a fast pace.
Even know we ( Delta Computer Systems, Inc ) make french fry scanning machines that scan french fries and cuts the defects out. These are called automatic defect removal machines and we are on the third generation of these machines. In the past the potatos would go down a conveyor with about 10 people on either side with knives to cut the defects they cut see out. Now the machines run in auto and do a better job because each fry is scanned after they are cut into fries ( strips ). Each fry is logged to the 1/16th of an inch. The head office can access the machines over the ethernet and get data for each stip going in and how it was processed ( cut if required ).
BTW, it is nice to have some motion control technology when making the clippers that can cut the fries. The trick it so cut the fries without moving them while the move down the conveyor at 330 fpm or faster. We have special BLDC motors designed for this process and striped down versions of our commercial product to do the motion controls. These clippers are so fast that you can't see them cut.
Overall, we have probably displaced far more workers than we have hired or employ through our suppliers.
