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Humans Are Taking Jobs From Robots In Japan
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Bloomberg reports that humans are taking the place of machines in plants across Japan so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process. "We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them," says Mitsuru Kawai, a half century-long company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship at Toyota's plants. "When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods (Kami-sama in Japanese), and they could make anything."
According to Kawai, learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn't get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota's factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes. In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota's Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line and Kawai also credits manual labor for helping workers improve production of axle beams and cut the costs of making chassis parts. "We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again," says Kawai. "To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.""
According to Kawai, learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn't get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota's factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes. In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota's Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line and Kawai also credits manual labor for helping workers improve production of axle beams and cut the costs of making chassis parts. "We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again," says Kawai. "To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.""
Fatal Error : they took our jerbs!
You have to know how to do something before you automate it effetively.
more at 11.
We all know what comes next.
Asimo's are now going to form a union and demand equal pay
I thought the machines revolutions was gonna start because computers would become self aware and find that they didnt need humans.... but apparently its gonna be because we are taking their jobs????? odd...
Singularity is near. Even for robots which will be self-improving. Perhaps earlier than humans.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Do the robots welcome their new human overlords?
My grandfather who ran a decent sized industrial manufacturing company knew this, as well. He would send his new engineers on a year of working actually building the products that they would be designing. This helped make sure they didn't make stupid mistakes like butting bolts in a difficult to reach location, etc.
Anyone who knows anything about Toyota knows about TPS.
They use Toyota Production System to improve process and workplace organisation. There are only 100 manual workplaces - you'd probably find that only senior engineers are assigned to these positions and probably have to study the items they're making. "Go Look, Go See."
Not news - it wasn't 20 years ago and it still isn't today.
When reached for comment, Bender Bending Rodríguez, the Mexican-built Bending Unit 22, known as a foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, cigar-smoking, kleptomaniacal, misanthropic, egocentric, and ill-tempered robot, said "Bite my shiny metal ass!"
The robots would be going a little something like this.
*ahem*
Robot: "Fucking humans, coming over here, taking our jobs."
One of the reasons I love Japanese Quality is because of Ribbons of Shame.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Man, if workers in Alabama who "assembled" my Honda had to wear them I wouldn't have so many little quality issues.
You really don't want to know what robots do when they sit idle.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The Japanese government actually contracts for the production of certain handmade saw blades which couldn't be sold profitably so as to ensure that the skills for producing the saws will be taught and passed down to succeeding generations of saw makers.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
That's why I regularly, instead of driving to the place I need to go, cover the terain on foot. Doing so, I get to know the environment better and have a better understanding of the function of a car.
I call it "going for a walk".
Karera wa watashi tachi no shigoto o totta!!!
-BREEP-BOP!-
The existing robots will eventually be replaced by 3D printers making those parts. The skill needed is writing/using CAD software.
Just wait a few production cycles and the new manager will discover that coders can program AIs that do even better than experienced machinists at making designs that reduce scrap, anticipate points of failure, and shorten production lines. Once the properties of the material being used can be reliably modeled, an AI can start with input data from metallurgy, and supplement it with data mined from authorized repair shops that make accurate reports about what broke, when, where and how. That failure data will update the metallurgical models and refresh the designs. At this sort of thing (massive data integration, statistical reasoning, etc.) AIs will probably always have an advantage over humans.
So they are retiring robots to have humans do their jobs in order to one day build better robots with human modeled efficiency to replace the humans?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
It's great that they are forward looking and value craftsmanship.
In the USA, we are now stealing jobs from Canada -- because we are so awesome!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
Oh wait -- no, they just underbid Canadian workers who were bending over backwards in negotiations to keep Caterpillar jobs -- after they won the contract from workers in Georgia. Next, India will likely "win" the contract as they underbid Wisconsin even with the ever lower wages.
I've already paid for my college education -- so I still have THAT advantage over a robot.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren’t there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman’s response: “Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?”
But do they run Linux?
There are many things that can not be learned except by doing them and to become proficient at them requires doing them A LOT. I am an engineer, and if you look at the record there were a number of unusual engineering "disasters" back in the late 1960's and through most of the 1970's. That's when side rules and hands on experience began to be replaced by simulation, modeling and things like Computer Aided Drawing and Design (CADD). Many of these failures were the result of inexperienced engineers and designers depending too much on their calculations and not being able to understand when the "ghost in the machine" was not telling them the truth. Although I would not advocate a return to the slide rule the one thing that you had to be able to do to use one was to be able to keep track of the order of magnitude you were working with.
Engineering failures of that era were not usually due to errors in the CADD modeling or computer calculations, but due to a lack of understanding by the people using them. They were often used with invalid assumptions or in inappropriate situations . Prior to the use of computers to do the massive iterative calculations needed, Space Frame structures were mostly used only where the lightest and strongest structures were absolutely necessary. Dirigibles come to mind. After the computer revolution in computer aided design, they began to appear everywhere and a number of the early ones failed catastrophically.
My career moved more and more directly into working with computers over the years and I have written code in half a dozen languages, and I can't think of any of them where it wasn't critical to understand whether the output and results you got were REASONABLE.
If you don't understand how to do what you are automating then it is impossible to automate it well.
We all understand how technology is more efficient and costs less than the average worker, but, how will anybody be able to afford a product or live in the modern world if we all were replaced by machines and can't find any other type of work(last resort prostitution the oldest occupation). They want demand and cheap labor which is impossible, they can't have both.
Mercedes-Benz has been training there young employees in this fashion for 50 years or more. When you join Mercedes-Benz the first thing you do is file, and file, and file. you make things by hand long before you start putting together any cars.
Compiler writers take note.
This is Slashdot. We know what a kamisama is. In fact, most of us have dreamt of moving to Japan. 'Cause in Japan, when you are a single nerd boy, you typically date a kamisama, an alien, a foreigner, and a moral & update Japanese girl all at the same time. That's the way it works over there. So yeah, we know.
Even robots are suseptable to burn-out and corruption.
This is just another form of the "Continuous Improvement" method of quality management, also known as the "Deming Cycle" or "Plan-Do-Check-Act".
Monitor your process, find optimizations, improve your process, and monitor some more.
It may result in new robots, or it may simply result in better deployment of existing ones.
My son's 5th grade teacher actually assigned them "write a limerick about a planet". I'm not kidding.
Some jobs are just to dangerous for robots to do.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
"To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine."
Boy, there are some deep lessons and insights here for the Facebook / Twitter / app-for-everything user generation.
Learn how to use the machine -- or the device -- or it will use you.
licet differant, aequabitur
Dennis DeYoung.
Domo Arigato.
This is a training program, not a production process. They have a few people doing forging by hand, but not to make production parts. See the original article in the Japan Times. Toyota's process of continuous improvement of production requires that people working on assembly lines understand the process well enough to suggest improvements. They recognize that they've dumbed down the workforce too much.
Ford Motor funded the building of the Detroit TechShop for similar reasons. They need more people who have a good sense of how stuff is made. Who in the US gets a degree in production engineering any more?
I'm going to make our programmers code everything in machine language so they can learn to be gods.
Actually, forget machine language, they have to assemble the computer from discrete logic gates!
Self-test result summary: DER TURKIN AR JERBS!!!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Made by robot or Made by guys hammering parts in. ...hmmm... as long as it wasn't their embedded software engineers who made it.
Bloomberg only says things when it somehow benefits him to do so. The fact is, a few locations have people replacing robots, but a majority of the country have robots replacing people.
Bloomberg is a big fat asshole.