# For a guy who can't fathom a DRO



## Tozguy (May 22, 2020)

I find this kind of stuff is truly awesome


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## MrWhoopee (May 23, 2020)

And we wonder where all the jobs have gone.


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## derf (May 23, 2020)

Wonder how many of those robots ever bought a car.....


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## MrWhoopee (May 23, 2020)

derf said:


> Wonder how many of those robots ever bought a car.....



That's exactly what I asked Home Depot about their self-checkouts.


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## Be_Zero_Be (May 23, 2020)

*I have prohibited myself from using self-checkouts in a store where they sell large hammers. *


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## Tozguy (May 23, 2020)

Do robots build robots?


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## darkzero (May 23, 2020)

Tozguy said:


> Do robots build robots?



Yup, yes they do! And they even salavage each other for parts. I suppose that would make them cannibals in a sense?

Perhaps I've been watching too many movies.


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## Mitch Alsup (May 23, 2020)

MrWhoopee said:


> And we wonder where all the jobs have gone.



It is not just the jobs
Robots do not take home an income and are not taxed (often receiving tax benefits.)

So A robot take someone job, and then the person needs *.gov assistance, but *.gov has less revenue coming in.


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## MrWhoopee (May 24, 2020)

Mitch Alsup said:


> It is not just the jobs
> Robots do not take home an income and are not taxed (often receiving tax benefits.)
> 
> So A robot take someone job, and then the person needs *.gov assistance, but *.gov has less revenue coming in.



Amen brother! You're preaching to the choir. To make matters worse, it's probably a Chinese robot!


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## Larry$ (May 24, 2020)

If it wasn't for robots you couldn't afford a car! 
Robots are just another form of automation that has been happening for many years. The sewing machine probably took away more jobs than robots. How about earth moving equipment VS a shovel? Automation has raised our standard of living.


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## tweinke (May 24, 2020)

Skynet.......


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## Mitch Alsup (May 24, 2020)

Larry$ said:


> If it wasn't for robots you couldn't afford a car!
> Robots are just another form of automation that has been happening for many years. The sewing machine probably took away more jobs than robots. How about earth moving equipment VS a shovel? Automation has raised our standard of living.



Automation raises the std of living for people who remain employed due to higher productivity, but lowers the std of living for those less employable.

We are now living in a world where everything that needs to be {built, grown, healed, policed, served, accounted for, paper pushed, disposed of} can all be performed by 1/2 the people of the planet for all 7.7B people. So, other than the 20% who are not old enough to work yet or old enough to be retired, what do you do with the other 30% of the people on the planet?


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## Tozguy (May 24, 2020)

Build pyramids?


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## Tozguy (May 24, 2020)

I agree with Tozguy.


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## theperfessor (May 24, 2020)

There is a TMMI (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Inc) plant about 15 miles north of where I live. When I was an Instructor of engineering at the local University we toured the plant. Yep, lots of robots and automation. There is also a PPG plant that makes windshields for many major carmakers. This was probably 15 years when I toured it last. The glass came in as large bundels of sheets and left as crated up boxes of auto glass, mostly front and rear but also side glass for minivans and such. The only time people interacted with the glass was to unload it from trucks and load it onto the first work station of the line, and then to pick up the loaded crates of finished products and put them on trucks. Robots and automated handling equipment did everything to manufacture the product. People were needed for maintenance, product testing and inspection, fork lift operators, management and engineering. Moving and installing equipment was hired out to outside contractors.

A friend of mine does pretty well working from home rebuilding robots (mostly welding robots) and putting together turnkey workcells. He is just one example of a person who adapted to changing technology.

It is just a fact that PEOPLE doing production work is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, but that doesn't mean PEOPLE aren't needed to produce things, they just need to adapt to new roles and learn new things. I can appreciate a certain amount of nostagia for the past and unease at the changing role of work but after spending most of my career in technical education I know people can learn and adapt to almost anything.


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## MrWhoopee (May 24, 2020)

Larry$ said:


> If it wasn't for robots you couldn't afford a car!
> Robots are just another form of automation that has been happening for many years. The sewing machine probably took away more jobs than robots. How about earth moving equipment VS a shovel? Automation has raised our standard of living.



Yes, for the people who have jobs. The requirements for a job that will support a family continue to increase while we starve our educational system, making it ever more difficult to produce citizens who can meet those requirements. The good job that I got in '74 with a 2-year A.A. now requires, at minimum, a 4-year B.S.

I'm not so foolish as to cast doubt on the value of automation, I just wonder what the endgame is. How will people be supported once we have automated all of the jobs that can be, and raised the requirements for the remaining "decent" jobs beyond the reach of the average person?

I'm always amused by the phrase "shovel-ready projects", as if there's a shovel involved.


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## Kiwi Canuck (May 24, 2020)

Cool video, I've always loved going on factory tours, even a school trip to a canning factory production line mesmerized me.

While in Munich to pickup a new BMW R100 Motorcycle in 1981, they gave me a tour of the 3 Series production line, especially interesting to me as I had a 320i at the time, the factory was heavily automated even back then. 

That tour really blew my mind and I was sold on BMW for years to come, almost everything I bought in those days was Japanese or European made as I could be assured it was well made, I wasn't anti-American, it just made sense if you wanted quality and value it came down to certain brands that happened to be made in Germany or Japan.

My company car at the time was a Chrysler K car, enough said. 

When I was a kid in the late 60's we discussed in class about the upcoming automation/robots and what skills we would need to have to be employable in the future.
Many thought that automation would take away almost all jobs, but that has not been the case, it's replaced them with different jobs, the biggest threat which was not discussed was the offshore movement of manufacturing which was self inflicted to a certain degree.

There are so many industries and jobs that didn't exist 40-50 years ago that support all this new technology and we as humans have a desire to make mundane tasks easier by using tools or technology, so it's what we do.

One of the benefits of automating production or any work, is the problems associated with managing a workforce that has become the largest expense for many employers, so they are forced to automate if they want to stay in business.

Unions have helped as well as hurt the workers job security and future income, it's a catch 22 for both sides.

I remember a review done by the auto industry back in the late 70's or early 80's comparing productivity of different factories by country and some of the UK factories being the least efficient, they took almost double the number of man hours to build a standard model sedan as the most efficient factory.

Stories surfaced later about how the night shift at British Leyland took a 2 hour sleep break each night and had someone on watch while the crew slept, it's hard to feel sympathy when this was standard practice, they were out worked by the other European and Asian factories and along with the profitability and quality suffering as a result,  the "them versus us mentality" (Management versus the Workers) that has been entrenched in the workforce for hundreds of years has been hard to overcome in the West while the East has adapted and steam rolled on and dominated the manufacturing industries.

I do see a renewal in small start up manufacturing in the West, online funding sites like Kickstarter allow new ideas and products to make it to market that would never have seen the light of day otherwise and they can only stay in business and compete if they go offshore or stay at home and automate once they get to a certain size. 

I am a former employee who took the path of technician to salesman to business owner and now employ about 25 people in my business.

We have employees who try to game the system from time to time, we have competitors that lowball project bids which sets the standard for pricing, if we want to play in that market segment we need to be in the ballpark price wise, so we have implemented technology to help us be more competitive and efficient.
We spend tens of thousands each year training our staff, we buy quality tools that help us work more efficiently and reduce costly errors, we spend money and time on  analyzing our past projects, all this to ensure we have a future for my family and my employees families, it's a great time to be involved in building a business/team but it still is very challenging. 
We've implemented GPS in vehicles, Cameras in the shop and inventory lockup, sophisticated software to track jobs and projects, there was a bit of resistance at first, but as a smaller company we  were able to work with the staff to show them why the technology will help them and ensure we have a future together.
The amount of work managing all the technology has created more jobs and because we are more competitive we have created more jobs, it's been a hard battle that we are winning for now, but what other choice did we have?

This topic is sure an interesting rabbit hole to go down and I'm sure everyone has their own opinion regardless of what side of the fence they are on, but if you are looking for a simpler life, focus on what you can control and leave that to which you cannot control to others. 

Rant over.

David.


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## Boswell (May 24, 2020)

there is an interesting discussion going on in another thread titled Curious why people need a small bandsaw for DIY.  One of the interesting things that thread has illustrated is the very different approach to Hobby Machining for people in Taiwan and other asian countries compared to the US and likely other countries where it is not common for people to own industrial machines (bandsaws in this case but also lathes and mills etc)  unless it is to make money. To me this ties into the discuss of automation because, there are many people that have the leisure time and the savings to be able to spend it on "Industrial" equipment mostly for entertainment purposes.  I realize that Automated factories have ruined the lifes of many people just like farm automation, and construction automation. (how many people with a shovel does a back-hoe replace?) before. For that I am very sad. No one deserves to work hard all their life doing all that was asked of them and then suddenly be out of work with the wrong skills.  Despite the specific harm the industrial revolution did and is still doing to individuals. The results are generally a much higher standard of living and a better life for our kids.  I my opinion the focus of our social change should be on how to re-skill, re-employee or just plain take care of. the people that are displaced. I should say that my opinions here are from observation not personal experience as I got into technology at the dawn of the personal computer.  I hope I have not offended anyone as that is not my intent.


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## Tozguy (May 24, 2020)

Back when I started working at a large textile plant there were people retiring who had worked there for over 50years. At the turn of the 20th century if you grew quickly as a kid you could lie about your age and start working at a very young age. But the whole industry ended up moving offshore where labor rates were much lower. Persons with over 20 years experience at the plant were laid off. Many said  they had expected to work their whole life at the same place.

The same thing happened to my father who had to learn a whole new industry (printing) at an age when learning new stuff quickly was not that easy. But he did it and continued working to retirement. The same for many other people who did not dwell on what was fair or what they were entitled to. They focused on the opportunities available to them.

Today there are many progressive small businesses that cannot find the help they need. Reliable hard working employees have always been hard to find and automation was the only route to keeping the good ones working.

There are many unskilled and skilled jobs around here that no one wants but that someone from a poorer country would jump on. So the argument that automation creates unemployment and is anti social has a steep slope to climb. The evidence is quite the contrary around here because even the people on welfare have TVs and cars and go to restaurants.


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## Kroll (May 25, 2020)

And the product is no cheaper than when being produce by humans. But then again what's going to happen if and when elec cars take over?


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## Tim9 (May 25, 2020)

Totally agree. What is the end game. So we offshored our manufacturing base. And China had cheaper labor. But as the economy increased in China... even those Chinese living in crowded polluted cities working in sweat shops started complaining. They demanded higher wages and their wives started complaining about pollution and birth defects. It’s what mothers do.  Pollution was and is horrendous. They wanted higher wages.
Big businesses now have even more incentive to automate. It’s bound to happen. High employment of yesteryear is gone. And yet... worldwide population is higher than ever. This partially explains the migration of immigrants. The other part of that equation is crop failures... climate change. The above are just facts. I don’t have the answers. It’s complicated.
   What do we do and where do we go. As Andrew Yang’s entire campaign was about the above dilemma. No one paid attention but it a real problem facing the world.


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## fixit (May 25, 2020)

Tozguy said:


> Do robots build robots?




YES!


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## Janderso (May 25, 2020)

I’m using an Ipad, not able to open the video?


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## Kiwi Canuck (May 25, 2020)

Janderso said:


> I’m using an Ipad, not able to open the video?


Try this, not the same one but you'll get the idea.


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## Larry$ (May 26, 2020)

Before this virus thing, lots of companies were looking for "qualified" employable people.  Enough education or experience to function, most of the time.  I've been an employer most of my life. Interviewed 100's (1000s??) of applicants, most of whom no one would hire to sweep the floor, let a lone doing something I was selling to a customer.  Must have "talents" basic math (add, subtract, multiply, divide,)  Communicate: write legibly, understand written/verbal instructions. Be willing and try to learn new things. Have a good, positive attitude. All of these should have been learned in school but most are not. I found that more Hispanic, Vietnamese and Eastern European people had these qualifications than US high school graduates. That tells me a lot about the school system's preparing people for the real world. Lucky for me, I'm now retired and don't have to hire anyone.


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## Tozguy (May 26, 2020)

I'm not sure that the school system is solely to blame for people's attitudes and behaviours. Somehow we seem to have developed social values for raising and schooling our children that don't always get the results we anticipated in the long run. The school system is a reflection of what we collectively think is best for our children. 
Learning starts at home at the age of one minute old. Many parents are lost as to how to raise their children and rely on the school system to turn their children into model people. They sit back and complain to the school when their child is unhappy. I think that we need to put more emphasis and resources on educating parents. Learning is a life long activity and we are taught many things at school, college and university. But none of it replaces what we should learn at home.
It is interesting to see how much home schooling has grown recently with the covid crisis. Hopefully it will lead to some realizations and show the way to improvements in our attitudes as parents.


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## middle.road (May 26, 2020)

Someone has to program the 'Bots.
Someone has to maintain and repair them.
And someone designs the tooling and fixtures required for the 'Bots to function.
It's not a one for one position swap no doubt, but 'Bots do not totally eliminate jobs.


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## Boswell (May 26, 2020)

There are also jobs created to think up, design, sell, maintain and eventually dispose of  new stuff that was not possible before robotic construction or other low cost manufacturing solutions.  In fact, I think this is an area that the US has excelled at. At one point computers were going to displace office workers. Now look at how huge the IT industry is. Not saying that Auto Workers or any specific industry will not be hurt but for a long time now, we, as a society, have found ways to make lemonade.


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