OT: Ever experience animosity from manual machine operators?

Have you ever had to go in to a plant/shop with the mission of automating a manual machine and have to learn how the machine operates, from the guy whose job is about to become obsolete or radically different? Or gone in to install a brand new automated machine among a sea of manual machines with operators staring at the new machine like the harbinger of doom?

I have been in that situation a few times and it always went much more smoothly than I expected. I always expect one time it's going to turn out like that episode of SouthPark "They took our jobs!" but so far it's never gone down like that. Operators are surprisingly helpful. Maybe I'm just a disarming person. What's your experience? Have you ever been the catalyst of a union strike or anything like that?

I have not personally had any problems like that, but I do know some others who have. I think it is primarily a local plant issue not something that is general. I generally find most operators to be helpful with a few who just don't care at all.

I've had one occasion where I really ticked an operator off. I was there to improve the system, and lock it down because their quality control department did not have control of product flow in the plant. Led to a lot of re-work.

Anyway, this was the most knowledgeable operator and I established good relationship with him so I could understand the system, the original integrator was not called back and we were brought in. So I had to put on my detective hat.

I can understand why he got angry, I had to use his knowledge against him. Prevent him from advancing batches until quality released them. He called me out on it pretty quickly and it took a bit for him to get past it. Ultimately he understood I was just doing my job and I understood that he took pride in his job and the quality holds I had to put in place effected his ability to make a high number of batches in a day, which took a hit on his pride and his feeling of control.

Yes and No.
In one case it was just the opposite. I can remember automating a veneer mill in the 1980s. I am not a fan of unions but in this case the union workers were actually working because they were competing against other mills within their company. There were 12 mills and two were going to be shut down. That fact that I was there installing equipment as a reassuring sign that their mill would not be shut down.

I another case yes. In the past the defects were removed from potatoes by a lot of workers that would pick up a potato and look for defects and cut them out with a paring knife. A major company that makes french fries did some research and found that the best 1/5 of the workers could effectively do as well as the worse 4/5. However, machines that can scan and remove defects from french fries were much better. About 10-25 workers were replaced by a machine that does much better. I am sure they didn't like that. Especially since these potato/french fry plants are in remote places where there aren't a lot of jobs.

Most times it goes well, because, generally we are automating out a difficult, dirty, dangerous or repetitive job and the operator's don't like the job anyway. But I have had the occasion of being cursed at, as well as the smug I told you so, during initial debugging stages, where they are hoping for failure. In the end, it works, I get paid, and I go about my business so it's all good.

Before I got into automation I was an electrician and we were doing a huge upgrade to a line at a major aircraft manufacturer. My buddy worked there and he was all stoked that this was going to make his job so much eaiser. I couldn't get him to understand it was going to make jobs obsolete because they had all been screwing off so much. He caught on 2 months later when the 2/3 of the crew that did his job were let go. He kept his job. I guess there were some guys that goofed off even more than he did. Hard to believe really...

Kraken Fan #69

I upgraded one machine and we've always discussed with the operators what we plan to do and if there's things we can doe for them in the process. Mainly upgrades to an existing machine meant simpler life for operators, more chat time and less backache, because getting funding was such a pain we used to do these upgrades from the Safety budget, so after removing a manually operated air clutch with a solid coupling and VSD drive on the motor and semi automating the cutting, the operators were stoked, It was safer than before complying with the current standards, I speed the machine itself up 20% and they achieved a 30% increase in productivity, it saved myself and the fitters hours of screwing around with the old machine and damage to the manually operated cutter, one operator went flat out on it and got employee of the month because the KPI bean counters noticed the improvement, still to this day they don't realise my Safety upgrade was behind it.

Over 10 years of similar upgrades, the only operators that were ever made redundant were generally untidy, lazy, non-team players and idiots that everyone was happy to see the last of anyway.

In my part of the world, the plant workers know that if there is no efficiency improvements, the production will be moved to india or china.
So when we are involved in improving an existing plant, the workers see it as an assurance that they arent going to get fired.

JesperMP said:

In my part of the world, the plant workers know that if there is no efficiency improvements, the production will be moved to india or china.
So when we are involved in improving an existing plant, the workers see it as an assurance that they arent going to get fired.

Click to expand...

excellent point. That's great perspective to carry into the meeting.