It's an avowed aim of the Toyota Production System
Automation with a human touch
‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
101–110 of 119 posts
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#102I guess a programming analogy might be the "radical" idea that it might make sense to let highly paid engineers read through the source code of libraries that you use.
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the nice summary. No way was I going to click on a headline that read like this one! There are two kinds of jobs that robots will have a hard time replacing: these sorts of high-skill, creative, intution-and-experience heavy tasks; and low-skill but mechancially awkward tasks. In both cases, the key to job survival will be that it's something of a niche. Anything remotely generic will be taken over by mach…
>There are two kinds of jobs that robots will have a hard time replacing: Three - add anything which is primarily social. I think hairdressing will be one of the most resilient jobs. Not only is there a huge market for it, but it requires a certain basic level of dexterity, and it's primarily social. The talking is at least as important as the hair cutting, and it's going to be a while before robots can replace it.
I would definitely buy a robot hair cut if it was fast, cheap, and worked well.
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#104Reminds me of the John Henry myth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29
probably will end the same way.
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#105This is a fundamental shift from how many other factories work. In general, the workers are not given enough information to replicate the product. They are shown how to attach a specific sprocket to a widget. The tasks are kept so simple (nothing to do with pleasantness) that no one can learn how the whole device is created or suggest improvements. This model lends to people being replaced by robots because human cap…
Thanks for the nice summary. No way was I going to click on a headline that read like this one! There are two kinds of jobs that robots will have a hard time replacing: these sorts of high-skill, creative, intution-and-experience heavy tasks; and low-skill but mechancially awkward tasks. In both cases, the key to job survival will be that it's something of a niche. Anything remotely generic will be taken over by mach…
I understand your point, but I disagree.
It may take some time, but many of these 'awkward' jobs too will disappear. Once the house is the machine, the problem of maintaining it becomes a lot simpler. In fact, these environments may look nothing like a house (I would expect the first iteration to focus on low-cost functionality over form). Such machines could eliminate the need for independent robots or human labour.
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#106This is the normal backwash of Toyota.
Toyota was one of the(or probably the) first company to totally replace humans with computers in their production lines.
So, as a result, they are the first to say: "Well, it looks like some things computers do very badly compared to humans".
Today little things quality inspection is done by humans but most of the work is done by machines, so take whatever you read with a big grain of salt.
Yeah, there are professionals needed, my company is one of those. But most of the jobs those companies created are forever gone.
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two distinct groups involved here. First, there is a specific role in Toyota group companies with the title "Production Engineering", which is tasked with creating/improving/redesigning/etc. the production process of particular products, new and old. They are the most important category of engineers hired as undergrad and masters engineering graduates, and everyone knows that they are the group best positio…
This is a great perspective. You've done a pretty detailed analysis of the company process. So is the Production Engineer "Seisan Gijyutsu" focused on finding improvements for the Craftsmen to develop or does the Production Engineer "Seisan Gijyutsu" develop the improvements and teach them to the craftsmen?
The production engineer is there to optimize the production line - this is where Iso9000 and BS5750 really come into their own.
eg if i replace this machine tool with x% scrap/rework rate with a new one that has y% and the new machine costs Z$ million - how long does it take to payback.
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, The explanation that I get from article for the shift to training more metal workers is that a highly skilled metal worker winds-up being more akin to an engineer - that aspects of metal work are too complex to be understood by just theoretical knowledge of the engineers. Thus the robots in the factories duplicate the processes which both metal workers and engineers create. But if you get rid of the metal worker…
Some tradestaff do progress in to 'engineering' roles and in many professional engineering organisations there's provision for recognising this. They tend to be given a title like 'technical officer' and their role is to do the engineering with a bit less maths and a bit more hands-on experience. Recognising and upskilling the best tradestaff into these roles is one of the most important aspects of a successful mecha…
er yes their always has been a vocation route it normally goes
Trade Apprentice -> Technician (associate professional) -> Engineer -> Ceng (PE)
Some Cultures make it harder to actually progress all the way Germany used to be realy bad.
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#109So should developers learn more about how low level libraries work so they can make better code? ie, should we be fostering more Kami-Sama developers? Or do you really not need to know that stuff, and focus instead on putting together higher level libraries into awesome apps because business is business and we have deadlines?
Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is a method for distributing scarce resources. Remove the scarcity and you remove the need for capitalism.
Not all resources will be non-scarce, though, so this kind of one-size-fits-all thinking is misleading. Nor are all alternatives to capitalism socialism. Socialism is also known to have very severe problems in application, particularly how to incentivize socialist managers to behave like capitalist ones in most circumstances, driving innovation and maximizing productivity. Socialist managers have somewhat different c…
>which is what socialism is, and nothing else
Actually, socialism is the ownership by the workers of the means of production.
A system of co-operatives would also be socialist.