[treffk]

Last month I took a tour of one of Stihl's manufacturing plants. The biggest things I look away from that tour (comparatively to the P&G chemical plant tour I did a few years ago) was the automation and rare use of PPE. The plant was almost fully automated and even had robots driving around autonomously carrying heavy pallets. With the automation and safety features built in there was no need for safety glasses or ear plugs. Gloves were the only thing that you occasionally saw. The group I was with asked about the automation and what it does for jobs. When Stihl automates something taking the human factor out of it, they retrain that employee to do another job. Stihl's plant in Virginia Beach has not had a layoff since the early 70's. Technology has come quite a ways since then and it's awesome to see a company incorporating that without hurting their employees.