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and I can't see them leaving any time soon. Automation doesn't make sense in every aspect of the assembly of products. For instance, the welding of a vehicle in the old days required lines of people to lug around huge spot weld guns with a cable over their shoulder carrying 1000's of Amps of current for resistance spot weld, hitting the right number of welds in the exact location all day long is next to impossible. Now for that, a robot is perfect, it can do it all day, no breaks, 3 shifts and the output is exactly the same every time. Laying beads of sealer and painting the vehicle is exactly the same. Lifting heavy loads are also not a problem for most robots, Now head over to General Assembly where the interior gets put in and things are different. The supplier gives you a box of say wiring harnesses in a big box. Getting a robot to pull a part out of a box that isn't perfectly organized starts the problem, then getting it to install something like that ups the ante even more. Automation is only as smart as the programmer and there are limitations to what is cost effective and what isn't. Our current robots are good at repeating the same task over and over, they are not good at figuring out on their own how to pick up a part then orient it correctly then put it in, there are systems with vision that can do just that, but the price goes up VERY quickly. There will always be a group that has to maintain the equipment also, unlike the Terminator it doesn't last forever. Most plants still employ 1000's of people to make vehicles at rates up to about 80/hr. |
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