Automation may threaten human jobs, but it might actually threaten women more than men. This is not an obvious truth. After, all, women are only 15% of machine operators, according to a McKinsey study. As manufacturing moves from large numbers of human workers to fewer machine operators on the way to “lights out” facilities, won’t… Read more »
U. S. automakers shut down their factories in order to help flatten the curve of the global coronavirus pandemic. Ford, GM, and Fiat Chrysler, as well as Honda, Toyota, and Nissan, closed their plants after the UAW requested a shut down. Subaru, Volvo, Volkswagen, and Daimler later announced shutdowns, too. A worker at a Ford… Read more »
Healthcare workers are very correctly being hailed as heroes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Grocery store workers have been classified as first responders in some states, as they continue to go to work in spite of unsafe conditions. Even truck drivers have had some callouts on social media, since they bring toilet paper to stores. People… Read more »
We work with a lot of clients in the printing industry, so we were fascinated when we found out about the exciting history of the printing press. Seriously. Movable type It all started with Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, of course. Up till that time, printing a page meant engraving the whole page in mirror image… Read more »
Two robot arms with interchangeable tools, a long flexible body that can form a U shape for two-handed jobs, and the ability to live permanently underwater. That adds up to a new, disruptive robot vehicle for inspecting underwater pipelines. One end can film the other end at work. Or it can grab and hold the… Read more »
We know what automation has done for factories. Human workers are safer than they were before, child labor is a thing of the past, and consumer goods are available to more people than ever. What about automation in our homes? Are they saving us energy? Time? Effort? Keeping us safe? One study found that robotic… Read more »
Sending Rexroth Indramat motors to third party repair shops is kind of like playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun. The only question is how bad is it going to be? The 3rd party shops cannot buy new parts, they do not have access to drawings or technical specifications and in most cases they do… Read more »
There are industries in which robots are really doing most of the work, such as the auto industry, and areas in which the promise of the robots always seems to be far ahead of the reality, like agriculture and fast food. What about bartending? Thrillist reviewed a bunch of robot bartenders to see whether they live… Read more »
In 2014, reshoring advocates claimed that U.S. manufacturing had brought 10,000 jobs back to the U.S. from China, Mexico, and other places they’d headed off to at the end of the 20th century. There was some back and forth controversy over whether reshoring was as big a deal as its proponents were claiming, and that… Read more »
A new and deadly virus originating in China, the coronavirus COVID-19, has infected tens of thousands of people and killed 600 people, 11 in the United States alone. One of the first things people thought about when fear of coronavirus began to spread was the possibility that goods being built in China and shipped to… Read more »
