21–30 of 40 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: in the early days of silicon wafer manufacturing (60s or 70s IIRC) they would randomly have yields crater for a few days each month. Eventually they discovered yields were tanking when their female employee was on her period. Source: The Big Scoree
Why would yields be influenced by that?
Automation is the only thing that will actually work in some situations now. Semiconductor manufacturing might be like a unicorn in terms of this paper. You can't really put humans into a factory without cratering the yield at 7nm and beyond. You see full-auto rates approaching 100% in the highest-end foundries. It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they ar…
Fun fact: in the early days of silicon wafer manufacturing (60s or 70s IIRC) they would randomly have yields crater for a few days each month. Eventually they discovered yields were tanking when their female employee was on her period. Source: The Big Scoree
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, I remember the discussion of this paper at my university a few decades ago. On your topic, I remember also a case that was discussed on a disinvestment of a fully automated factory. Loads of money was invested in the automation, but on several spots it still needed humans to glue the processes together. This work was so limited and dumb that no workers could be found who were able and willing to perform this t…
Back when the F-22 was in production, I was in the building in Seattle where the carbon fiber wing skins were being laid up using an automated tape placement machine. The machine head would come down to a precise 3D location on a complex contoured mold, contact it with a precise pressure, lay out a tow of CFRP tape prepreg for a precise length, then trim it to a specific geometry. Before the machine started the next…
Automation is the only thing that will actually work in some situations now. Semiconductor manufacturing might be like a unicorn in terms of this paper. You can't really put humans into a factory without cratering the yield at 7nm and beyond. You see full-auto rates approaching 100% in the highest-end foundries. It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they ar…
Fun fact: in the early days of silicon wafer manufacturing (60s or 70s IIRC) they would randomly have yields crater for a few days each month. Eventually they discovered yields were tanking when their female employee was on her period. Source: The Big Scoree
Automation is the only thing that will actually work in some situations now. Semiconductor manufacturing might be like a unicorn in terms of this paper. You can't really put humans into a factory without cratering the yield at 7nm and beyond. You see full-auto rates approaching 100% in the highest-end foundries. It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they ar…
Fun fact: in the early days of silicon wafer manufacturing (60s or 70s IIRC) they would randomly have yields crater for a few days each month. Eventually they discovered yields were tanking when their female employee was on her period. Source: The Big Scoree
Automation is the only thing that will actually work in some situations now. Semiconductor manufacturing might be like a unicorn in terms of this paper. You can't really put humans into a factory without cratering the yield at 7nm and beyond. You see full-auto rates approaching 100% in the highest-end foundries. It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they ar…
Bonding is not automated AFAIK.
Automation is the only thing that will actually work in some situations now. Semiconductor manufacturing might be like a unicorn in terms of this paper. You can't really put humans into a factory without cratering the yield at 7nm and beyond. You see full-auto rates approaching 100% in the highest-end foundries. It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they ar…
> It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they arrived at Foxconn or wherever. Bonding is not automated AFAIK.
Automation is the only thing that will actually work in some situations now. Semiconductor manufacturing might be like a unicorn in terms of this paper. You can't really put humans into a factory without cratering the yield at 7nm and beyond. You see full-auto rates approaching 100% in the highest-end foundries. It is likely that all of the chips in all of your devices never saw any direct human contact until they ar…
Fun fact: in the early days of silicon wafer manufacturing (60s or 70s IIRC) they would randomly have yields crater for a few days each month. Eventually they discovered yields were tanking when their female employee was on her period. Source: The Big Scoree
Related: Ironies of Automation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33476157 - Nov 2022 (5 comments) Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23300195 - May 2020 (11 comments) Ironies of Automation (1983) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19132724 - Feb 2019 (27 comments) Ironies of Automation (1983) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230258 - Oct 2018 (3 comments)…
The point of this paper about the relationship and absurdity of human-machine automation could not be better summarized than dang having to chime in with all the past submissions of the same paper.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see a factory like that! At one point the only remaining work was when something went wrong. The production line ran so fast, if something went wrong it produced enough garbage for 15 people to clean up. Not sure how they arrived at 15 but with fewer it took longer to resume production. I estimate the thing crashed from 2-3 times per day to every 3 days or so with the later more often. Took about 15-20 minutes to c…
> Investors didn't like to see people sit, chat and drink coffee I do believe that the "workers must be uncomfortable all the time" mentality drives a ton of inefficiency. When my son was born, my wife worked from home, but we still needed a nanny to watch him most of the time so my wife could work. So we hired a teenage girl to come over and keep an eye on him for $10/hour. He was a baby, so it was pretty easy work…
I'm constantly seeing tool demo videos with comments full of "What, you're not strong enough to just use X?" where X is usually something unpleasant but sometimes slightly faster or cheaper, like phillips deck screws or driving screws with an drill instead of an impact.
It makes me wonder if the trades actually need to be as hard on people's bodies as they are. If the demand was there to make the tech a bit cheaper.... it seems like a lot of manual labor could be saved, but there's a culture of not complaining.