As a result, the mill could operate with much fewer humans than before. Evans used a variety of wooden shafts and gears, plus leather and canvas belts, to transfer power to a sequence of machines connected to the same waterwheel at a flour mill in Delaware.Įvans’ mill automatically moved wheat from one operation to another using conveyor belts. He was an innovative millwright in Pennsylvania who created the world’s first continuous production line in 1784. One of the first people to experiment with lights-out automation was Oliver Evans. Indeed, generations of manufacturing engineers have heard about it and some have tinkered with the concept over the years. “Despite the hype around robots, humans remain the primary creators of both value and variability on the factory floor.” “Humans are the most valuable asset in the factory, and manufacturers should leverage new technology to extend the capabilities of both direct and indirect labor,” adds Prasad Akella, CEO of Drishti, an AI startup. “Humans are going to be the backbone of manufacturing for the foreseeable future.” “Despite headlines about robots and AI replacing humans in factories, people remain central to manufacturing, creating significantly more value on the factory floor than machines,” claims Michael Hu, a partner at A.T. Humans still perform 72 percent of manufacturing tasks. In fact, a recent study conducted by A.T. “However, eliminating the last 30 percent of human operators is inherently expensive.”Ĭontrary to widespread public concern about automation taking away jobs, humans still play a key role on assembly lines. “Some manufacturers have adopted lights-out approaches during third-shift operations that are traditionally harder on humans to adapt to,” de Boer points out. “The business case just isn’t there to justify it. “That’s why we see very few factories in the discrete manufacturing sector operating in a lights-out fashion,” claims de Boer. However, it’s a much different story when it comes to assembling aircraft, appliances, boats, cars, furniture, tractors, trucks and other products. Lights-out automation works in some process industries, especially where human contact can potentially damage or contaminate products such as food, microchips and pharmaceuticals. For instance, the creative and cognitive power of humans can easily improvise and solve problems related to assembly tasks.” There are many things that robots can’t do that humans can. “Many companies failed at attempts to implement lights-out automation in the past, because humans can often do a much better job than machines,” explains de Boer. “Instead, the lean manufacturing movement of the last two decades has showcased the power of the human operator on the factory floor. “The concept of lights-out factories, where there’s only machines such as robots operating, hasn’t been talked about much among discrete manufacturers since the 1980s,” says Enno de Boer, global head of manufacturing at McKinsey & Co. Last year, after throwing in the towel and replacing robots with humans at his controversial factory in Fremont, CA, Elon Musk tweeted that “excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake….Humans are underrated.” While many manufacturers now use a wide variety of robots, conveyors and other types of automation, people remain the most flexible “machine” available for performing many types of assembly tasks. However, squeezing humans entirely out of the assembly process often proved to be more expensive and more difficult than most people first imagined.Īfter decades of machine advances, recent lean manufacturing initiatives have once again stressed the importance of the human element. That led to a widespread automation scare and a backlash from organized labor. Once upon a time, manufacturers in a wide variety of industries attempted to automate everything and remove the entire human element with lights-out factories. Today, the growing popularity of collaborative robots has eliminated many traditional boundaries. However, human-machine interaction dramatically changed in the 1960s with the advent of computers, numeric controls and robots. Most early assembly lines were designed around machines human interaction was merely an afterthought.īy the time the term “automation” first appeared in the late 1940s, machines were idolized as the backbone of the American economy. For many decades, the universal goal in manufacturing was to create a factory that ran like a machine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |