Feb 16 2015
Buy More Robots? | Adams Nager | IndustryWeek
“More robots means lower unemployment and better trade performance. […] The United States does not lose jobs because there is not enough work to be done but rather because U.S. industry is not competitive with foreign producers. More robots will help fix this.”
Source: www.industryweek.com
It doesn’t mean robots are bad, only that they are not a panacea. Toyota’s Global Body Line is designed to use welding robots where they are justified, and manual welding where not, using the same fixtures.
In an auto parts plant in Japan, I remember seeing a machining cell with old machines served by robots. A few yards away were new, automated lines that didn’t use robots.
It looked very much as if the old cell with new robots was the result of incremental automation, and that the lessons learned had been applied in the design of the new lines.
Robots are tools. If you know how to use them, they will help you; if you don’t, buying more is just a waste of money.
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
May 29 2017
The Cobot Controversy | Christian Hohmann
‘The cobot controversy” is the title of a short article published by and on the Hannover Messe (“Hannover Fair”, the industry exhibition) website. […]This article proposes a “balanced” view about the impact of the collaborative robots (cobots) on the jobs in industry. It caught my interest because most often the articles on those subjects, i.e. robots and future of jobs are single-sided.
On the one hand promoters of the factory of the future, industry 4.0 and robotics only highlight the alleged benefits of the new technologies. On the other hand, prophets of doom predict nothing else than mass extinction of jobs.”
Sourced through Christian Hohmann’s blog
Michel Baudin‘s comments: This is the first of a series of posts on Christian’s blog about cobots, a term I hadn’t heard before that designates robots that collaborate with people. According to Wikipedia, the term was coined in 1996 by tow academics, J. Edward Colgate and Michael Peshkin, and has been used to designate commercial products since 2012. The concept, however, has existed independently of the term both in science-fiction and in real life.
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By Michel Baudin • Management • 0 • Tags: aliens1986, cobot, Creative Destruction, Robot