I’m talking about the automation of the widget manufacturing process. Building the factory and machinery itself is not yet an automated process.
For a specific peculiar type of widget, sure. But then someone comes along and demands a slightly different kind of widget, and that’s where all the money and manpower goes.
And I know that from the outside, modern factory automation looks super complex and surely it would take an expert to maintain. But trust me, the vast majority is actually hilariously simple.
More that everything is very specialized and difficult to adapt in the face of supply chain problems or swings in raw material supplies or downstream demand. But I’ll concede some of the stuff is pretty straightforward. We have these enormous boilers that were bought off the collapsing USSR. And… pretty much just “heat tube, collect output” is the extent of their function. The trick is to build something sturdy enough to handle all the changes in temperature and pressure.
We’ve got much more advanced equipment with more sensors and regulators. Great when they work, but it’s an enormous job getting in to fix things when they don’t. It’s not something you can assign a couple of day laborers outside Home Depot to address. You just have these teams that are intimately familiar with the hardware and how to identify and address problems quickly.
The problem with automation is that when you think you’ve gotten rid of the need for some number of these professional staffers, you’ve put yourself on a clock. Once a step in the process fails that you didn’t document or have someone on hand who understands, you’re way up shit creek.
For a specific peculiar type of widget, sure. But then someone comes along and demands a slightly different kind of widget, and that’s where all the money and manpower goes.
More that everything is very specialized and difficult to adapt in the face of supply chain problems or swings in raw material supplies or downstream demand. But I’ll concede some of the stuff is pretty straightforward. We have these enormous boilers that were bought off the collapsing USSR. And… pretty much just “heat tube, collect output” is the extent of their function. The trick is to build something sturdy enough to handle all the changes in temperature and pressure.
We’ve got much more advanced equipment with more sensors and regulators. Great when they work, but it’s an enormous job getting in to fix things when they don’t. It’s not something you can assign a couple of day laborers outside Home Depot to address. You just have these teams that are intimately familiar with the hardware and how to identify and address problems quickly.
The problem with automation is that when you think you’ve gotten rid of the need for some number of these professional staffers, you’ve put yourself on a clock. Once a step in the process fails that you didn’t document or have someone on hand who understands, you’re way up shit creek.