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Mercedes-Benz Swaps Robots For People On Assembly Lines (theguardian.com)
The usual narrative in the last few years is that robots relentlessly displace humans in today's highly mechanized workplaces (like factories and mines), but sometimes robots' speed and dexterity can't overcome their basic problem -- namely, they're robots. Reader jones_supa writes with this story from The Guardian about why robots aren't always the right tool, excerpting: Bucking modern manufacturing trends, carmaker Mercedes-Benz has been forced to trade in some of its assembly line robots for more flexible humans. The robots cannot handle the pace of change and the complexity of the key customization options available for the company's S-Class saloon at the 101-year-old Sindelfingen plant, which produces 400,000 vehicles a year from 1,500 tons of steel a day. The dizzying number of options for the cars – from heated or cooled cup holders, various wheels, carbon-fibre trims and decals, and even four types of caps for tire valves – demand adaptability, a quality that is still more easily fulfilled by humans than robots.
The robots wanted better working conditions and got replaced by humans. Damn corporations!
People are flawed creatures capable of manufacturing more profitable iterations of themselves for the workplace.
What jobs are safest?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Maybe the robots can ask for unemployment.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
so they can get the kinks ironed out. Problem solved.
we'll all breath easier?
Mercedes is shifting to what it calls “robot farming” - equipping workers with an array of smaller, lighter machines. ...
The change will mean smaller, more flexible systems that work side-by-side with humans will replace some of the large traditional robotic machines, including in the production of the new Mercedes E-Class. A human or a lightweight machine will replace two fixed robots for the alignment of the car’s new heads-up display, which projects speed and directions on to the windshield.
the basic problem is that Mercedes invested in large fixed machines that are limited in their abilities. they are temporarily relieving some of the large robots of certain duties to let more agile robots do the job. until the more agile robots are 100% ready, human will be assisting the robots.
it's 2016 and it's about time companies start investing in manufacturing machines that have hands with dexterity equal to humans. also, robotics companies need to develop better programming interfaces so that the robots can be taught what to do rather than directly programmed.
robots are still center stage here and humans are going to be on the sidelines again shortly.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It's almost as if the Germans have just found a source of cheap human labour.
Eventually once they figure out how to program in the increased complexity that extreme customizations bring then the humans will once again be replaced by robots. Nothing to see here.
I, for one, welcome our new human overlords.
are refugees? How is Mercedes Benz helping the migrant community?
PHB: were firing everyone and going with robots. who here knows SCADA
HR: I uh...yes, i know SCADA.
six months later...
PHB: ok robots arent working out as we'd intended so we're selling all of them and sending the programmers packing. Were going to be hiring a substantial number of new associates starting tomorrow...so...do any of you have any personnel or management experience?
SCADA coder: I used to do our payroll and holiday time scheduling!
PGB: Holy shit a talking SCADA programmer!
Good people go to bed earlier.
The threshold for profitable robotic replacement does keep dropping.
For specific well defined tasks of sufficient volume and economic value. The reason that I'm not worried about robots taking all our jobs is that there are SOOO many economically useful tasks for which will remain economically unviable to automation for the foreseeable future. I know dystopian futures are all the rage but the practical fact is that there are all sorts of technical and economic limits to automation. I run a manufacturing company and I can assure you that we are in no danger of robots pushing all people out of manufacturing any time soon. Similar to what happened in farming you will see a reduction of manufacturing jobs as a percentage of the work force but the number will not go to zero. I figure it will stabilize somewhere between 2-6% of the workforce in the coming decades though admittedly that is just a guess and it will take considerable time to get there.
What jobs are safest?
Developers of automation is the obvious one. Politicians for another. Artists. Engineers. Lawyers. Doctors and Nurses. Marketing. Soldiers. The list is pretty extensive. Automation will impact every job in some capacity but relatively few jobs will completely disappear.
"breathe", you numbskull.
... the cost of reprogramming.
The robots cannot handle the pace of change and the complexity of the key customization options available for the company's S-Class saloon at the 101-year-old Sindelfingen plant
"Hey! We don't serve their kind here.
What?
Your droids. They'll have to wait outside. We don't want them here.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
...Marketing weenies.
About the time the engineers have the robots all programmed and tested for the available options, here comes the marketing department and management, changing their minds.
heated or cooled cup holders...
Yeah, it's a Mercedes. Wonder if the cup holders run on engine vacuum.
... that works everywhere, for everything.
Humans are astonishingly versatile, but of course have many limitations. Oddly enough many managers don't seem to appreciate this, demanding things from people that they aren't good at and failing to exploit human strengths. So clearly one important factor in the ideal mix between robots and human workers at any point in time is how skillful you are at managing people. If you aren't very good at it, that tends to skew the best mix towards robots.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If we can have Robots that make everything for nothing, including themselves, then we will be in a Utopia as no one will have want for anything.
You haven't thought it through my friend. First off, human want is basically infinite, so there is that. Second, we have limits to the amount of energy practically available to us. Energy is the ultimate constraint on production of anything. Third, there are plenty of resources beyond labor that are scarce and provide practical constraints on production of tangible goods. Unless you are going to invoke some Star Trek replicator level of science fiction, even a self replicating hugely flexible robot will not mean the end of scarcity.
A little anecdote. The local carwash with a automatic mechanical washing street went bankrupt because they could not compete with the hand wash car wash. The hand wash was just as expensive for the customer, but their costs were lower and delivered a better result.
The automatic carwash had to spend quite some money for maintenance, energy and employees and needed more customers to break even. Their equipment had a maximum capacity and thus they could not scale up easily (or scale down) like the hand wash did who just hired some extra help.
The run-of-the-mill low-end Benz still made by robots but the higher priced model has enough profit margin to offset the increased cost of using moist robots.
Have gnu, will travel.
it's 2016 and it's about time companies start investing in manufacturing machines that have hands with dexterity equal to humans.
For specific tasks we have devices that already exceed human dexterity. Sometimes by a lot. The challenge isn't really dexterity as much as programability. We can make devices that hugely exceed human precision for many tasks. Replicating a human hand as an end effector is kind of a pointless and expensive exercise for most tasks. There are much more optimal designs depending on what you are doing. For example having a robotic copy of a human hand holding a welding torch is pointless complication and adds a lot of cost. There are people working on anthro designs but mostly for academic rather than practical purposes. I suspect you'll see it in places but as a general proposition replicating the human body isn't often the best approach to problem solving.
also, robotics companies need to develop better programming interfaces so that the robots can be taught what to do rather than directly programmed.
Already done. I was working with VR programming of robots for assembly line work 15 years ago in my day job and there has been progress since then.
When swapping, 1st noun replaces 2nd.
Swapping robots for people is hardly news.
Sounds like they're taking a page from Toyota's playbook.
Germany has good unions!
To bad that the GOP does not like them in the usa.
universal health care can help in the usa at the very least of moving the older people who don't need to work but are waiting for medicare. The ACA kind of covers that.
>spent money on maintenance, superfluous employees
All I hear is a robot voice saying "OPTIMIZING..."
$5/hr humans are going to look expensive when an unpaid robot can lay the brick, hell, can assemble the fucking wash system itself.
It's not here now, no, but 99.9% of Earth's descendants are fucked. I might complain about the shit deals my generation got, but I'm glad I dodged the post-labor bullet.
I'm so glad the stuck up snobs who buy their cars can now continue to ride around with tire valve cap A, instead of tire valve cap B. Can you image the HORROR of having the wrong tire valve cap on? The gaffe... the people at the country club woud give you HELL. Ahh, life is so hard.
With their parents out of work, how many little robots will now go to school hungry?
The janitors generally work harder and longer hours than CEOs.
No as a matter of fact janitors do NOT work harder and longer than the CEOs. The fact that you say that shows that you have no idea what a CEO of a large company actually does or the sort of hours they put in. I'll presume you know what a janitor does but I've yet to meet one who works harder than a CEO. They also provide quite a lot less value to a company and are far more easily replaced.
Are a lot of CEOs overpaid? Certainly. Are a lot of rank and file workers underpaid? Of course. But let's not get absurd about the relative value or typical work ethic of janitors.
As the janitors don't get 6-12 weeks of paid vacation a year.
Neither do most CEOs and even if they did, most couldn't really take it. Being CEO of a large corporation is a pretty all consuming job. You don't get to that job by taking a lot of time off and you certainly don't stay there by taking time off.
In a post-scarcity economy, they could be bought off even more cheaply, and live much better, with no net tax increase on the rich.
"In a post-scarcity economy"? Does that come with a side of unicorn farts and pixie dust? That's like saying that if Hogwarts were real we could use magic to do all the hard work. There is no such thing as a post-scarcity economy and there never will be. Unless you can find some way to literally generate vast (bordering on unlimited) energy with no negative side effects you will never get to anything resembling a "post-scarcity" economy. There is no remotely plausible way that is going to happen.
If robots do 100% of everything from cutting down the trees to making the carpet, you can have a house for the cost of the energy alone.
Incorrect. You are neglecting the cost of materials, the opportunity cost of the production, time value of money, financing costs, scarcity of the land and several other important costs. The economics are quite a bit more complicated than you are implying.
If power is all drawn from renewable sources, the cost could theoretically be zero or close to it.
In what universe? You think the equipment to get the power will be free? You think we'll magically have unlimited generating capacity with no environmental consequences? Renewable power isn't magic and certainly isn't even close to zero economic cost.
Then, if we are able to have the robots mine asteroids, we would then be in a post-scarcity economy where everything is free and nobody has to work.
You've been watching too much Star Trek. There is no such thing as a post scarcity economy and there never will be. Even if mining asteroids were practical (not clear that it is) and that it provided every kind of valuable and necessary resource (it won't) it still would not make everything free. There would be a non-trivial economic cost to it. An undergraduate accounting student could prove that your assertion is bogus.
In a world without labor cost, where robots can produce windmills, solar panels, and geothermal plants, even energy will have near zero cost.
Not according to anyone who has even a basic understanding of accounting. Even if the production of those things could be completely automated (it cannot without invoking science fiction) there still are costs of materials, cost of financing, limited amounts of land, environmental costs, cost of tooling, cost of design, and plenty of other non-trivial costs that you aren't considering. The fact that you take direct labor to approximately zero doesn't make it free. Not even close.
By the way we've heard the "energy too cheap to meter" argument before. It was bogus then and it is bogus now.
It is a safe be to say that improvements in technology will make this a temporary change.
"The company's S-Class saloon". Was this article written at one of these S-Class saloons?
I'm curious if this was a purely technical decision based on tasks and available automation technology, or if somehow labor politics was involved.
My understanding (which will quickly be corrected here, I'm sure) is that labor is a pretty high level stakeholder in German industry with more influence than typical American labor unions.
Is it possible this could have been done to create more jobs or working hours for labor under the guise of automation isn't right for the task?
Automation is already starting to replace engineers and soldiers.
Automation is SUPPLEMENTING engineers and soldiers. It isn't replacing them any more than Quickbooks replaced accountants or CAD replaced engineers. It just acts as a force multiplier. Any engineer that can be replaced by automation isn't worthy of the title. There is no replacement for boots on the ground in combat and there isn't one likely any time soon.
Expert systems are making inroads in medicine and law.
Again as a supplement. They are demonstrably not replacing members of those professions in any meaningful way. Those expert systems make the doctors better at their job but we still need the doctors. There is no automation in development that is going to replace a surgeon any time soon.
There is already a glut of lawyers.
Which is utterly unrelated to automation or the lack thereof.
No as a matter of fact janitors do NOT work harder and longer than the CEOs
Depends on the company, depends on the CEO. An emerging tech company, shoe-string budget, heated competition, something to prove? Work like hell.
Established commodity company? Government contractor? Off to the golf course... machine runs better without you around messing with it. Indeed, if you were to show up, all the Presidents and VP's feel the need to stop by and report to you (read: schmooze). Disappear, and they get back to work. Besides, don't you have a charity event or a board meeting that needs attending?
Janitor, on the other hand, has to clock in and clock out just right or get fired by the assistant assistant manager's assistant who's responsible for his department.
Oh, and budget cut time? Who's gonna feel the pain? The CEO? He fuck-well gives himself a raise. Why, Mr. Board Chairman? Because cutting jobs is stressful, and there's other CEO jobs out there beckoning for talent and willing to pay more. Just the cost of doing business. Better to pay up now than to go through the disruption (and stock price hit) of hiring someone new, right? Gotta form a search committee, issue press releases... better to just pay up.
or don't. Golden parachute. It's in the contract drawn up by my lawyer that you signed when you hired me.
Janitor... no contract? No lawyer on retainer? Not even a union rep? or health insurance? and you still ain't got your title back from TitleMax?
Huh... you in some shit!
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Yeah. How many humans can the world accommodate? In a world without "artificial scarcity" they'll breed like rabbits on viagra and fertility pills (producing real scarcity), and already there is arguably far too many of them.
There is plenty of evidence that isn't necessarily true. Birth rates in many countries have fallen below replacement as they have improved their economic well being. The best birth control appears to be economic opportunity. A Malthusian catastrophe is not a particularly likely scenario. It's just a perfect example of noticing a trend and extrapolating naively.
Established commodity company? Government contractor? Off to the golf course... machine runs better without you around messing with it.
"Established commodity company"? What like a steel manufacturer? If you think those executives aren't involved you've not met too many of them. While I have no doubt you could find some lazy CEOs out there for the most part the job doesn't lend itself to kicking back and relaxing. I don't know if you've ever actually worked with government contractors but I have. I spent some time with working at Boeing and some of my current customers are government contractors and I've met their CEOs. They don't remotely fit your description of them. You seem to think that big companies are these things that run themselves with little direction needed from the top. Couldn't be further from the truth in most cases. Not if they want to remain in business anyway.
Janitor, on the other hand, has to clock in and clock out just right or get fired by the assistant assistant manager's assistant who's responsible for his department.
Boy, clocking in and out on time. What a tough thing to do. So hard doing the absolute minimum required of you... Really, you're going to argue that punching a time clock somehow means they are unfairly burdened?
Oh, and budget cut time? Who's gonna feel the pain?
Which has what exactly to do with who works harder and longer? Yeah it's tough at the bottom of the food chain, no doubt. There also is usually a reason they are at the bottom of the ladder. I've employed more than a few janitors over the years. Nice enough people for the most part but generally not terribly bright or particularly hard working.
... is new again
Why UNIX?
"Have an A1 day"
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
400,000 vehicles a year from 1,500 tons of steel a day
If they run 365 days, that's 1368.75 kg of steel per vehicle. Even if they only run 250 days, it's 937.5 kg. Crap, that's massive, even without all the plastic, leather, wiring, batteries, hoses, etc.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
A friend at work has an original unrestored Mercedes-Benz W100 600 SWB from the 1960 that still purrs like a kitten and is comfyer than most new cars to ride in. Is there a checkbox on the orderform for the new S-class to have it last 50 yrs? or is it just 10-15 yrs before the scrapheap like most modern cars?
How many robots have been replaced?
How many human jobs have been added?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Thing is, you don't qualify for being that type of CEO unless you've done quite a few the jobs underneath. That person used to be one of those VPs, and possibly a director or even a minion. There are some that get into those roles because of Daddy, but that is not the rule at that level.
You may be on the golf course, or at a charity luncheon. But the reason you are there is because you know how to run a company, you know when to intervene and when to not. And you know that that luncheon is part of your work, as well. If you are needed to give a speech at some conference, you need to be there and ready. The analysts are watching you, your company's stock price or product line sometimes hanging on your words. You better nail it or you company takes a dive. Steve Jobs understood that, and that is why his talks were legendary for both their insane preparation and his ability to get things done with them. Jobs was nothing at all without his engineers, but where would Apple be today without him?
Now, at my much more humble level, the people on my team complete their assigned tasks, I don't care if they sit around on the web or go home early. I give them plenty to do, but I don't pay them less when they complete work quickly and correctly and are not constantly typing away. I value them for their skills and knowledge because I know for a fact that I need people with those skills and experience to do the job. Trust me, I have been "gifted" people who don't have those skills, and until they are up to speed, they're worse than useless, they're a drag on the team because we have to fix their mistakes while training them. I can't just grab someone who wants to do the job, even someone who is a hard worker. Raw work is needed, but it is *not decisive*.
I'm not saying a CEO is worth 100 times what I am worth as a human, but they do have experience and job responsibilities that they worked at. You can't just jam a janitor, or even a Sr. Manager in the CEO job. There are a small number of people who can do the job, and they have real work to do.
I think the real problem with corporations and the economy in general is that we need to change the goals of the system. Efficiency and demand still need to have a place, but we must find a way to temper it with social value, and I don't think that will actually come from laws or regulations imposed on people who don't believe in them. I think it comes from a society and a cultural commitment to do these things.
If you have a culture where getting the most points (i.e. dollars) or things is not the highest goal, you will find that it ceases to become an issue. I think America suffers from a consumerist and materialistic bent which has destroyed the balance. There are billionaires out there who will probably do nothing with the bulk of their money other than give it to charity or bequeath it to someone else. So it is clear they don't need to make that money, they need a new attitude. I don't think we can get it back with a law, I think we have to get it back and then the laws won't be needed most of the time, because people will do the right things of their own accord. The real question is how we do that.
Huh?
I think what you may be talking about is the Milton Friedman principle: a company’s primary purpose, and the purpose to which the CEO should solely focus, is to maximize shareholder value. A couple of generations have now grown up never knowing anything else. But the idea only dates back to the 1970's, but yet would have profound effects on the country, including the binding of executive pay to stock performance, and would ultimately contribute to the slash and burn antics of the buy 'em, split 'em, and sell 'em off for a quick-buck mayhem of the 1980's.
Have no idea whether this goo can ever be stuffed back into the tube. But the cult of feverishly favoring shareholders over employees and customers, where shareholders care only about quarterly portfolio values (if they're paying attention at all), tends to reward short-term cost-cutting, and does not inspire employee or customer loyalty. The best CEO's shield shareholder matters from employees, so that employees can concentrate on a future with the company rather than the next wave of layoffs.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
To some degree I am talking about that, and I mention shareholder value, but there are other things CEOs do which can move forward a company without specifically discussing shareholder value too. For instance, the luncheons can be charity events, where a CEO tends to be sent to participate or officiate.
CEOs can be very in-the-trenches sorts of people, but when you're in charge of a holding company with not only many units, but many different types of companies, your responsibilities can vary a lot from direct management of a specific organization.
And actually, shareholder value has always been Number One, the short term focus is what is new about that. Previously, stock prices were not so independent from the way companies were run, because the focus used to be on long term investment. If you bought a stock, you didn't buy a fly-by-night, and you looked at how well the businesses were doing, not how you could create news which allowed short term manipulation of stock price.
Alas, either way, I don't think the short term trader focus is going back in the bottle either. Too much money is being made that way.