Stephen Hawkins used to say “intelligence is the ability to adapt to changes“. These words are inspiring, if we think about the changes Professor Hawkins had in the course of his life due to his illness.
The modern world is in full and constant change, the industry adapts to the requirements of the market, and the industrial automation of new generation, cooperative, collaborative, Industry 4.0, is the next step to an evolution that began with the steam engines of the end of the 18th century, but that seems to have entered a new, more accelerated phase.
An operator of a modern foundry factory told me: “Some jobs are now automated so they seem much easier to do, before they had to be done by hand, now it is the robot that does the job.”
Automation means that what humans used to do, today is done by machines, robots and computers.
There was a lot of confrontation that automation was going to eliminate a lot of jobs and humans would be left with nothing to do, or worse without work.
But the reality is that in the capitalist societies new jobs are always invented, depending on the demand of society and its evolution, that fear that the machines replace the workers exists since the industrial revolution and has always been a false alarm.
Whenever there are substantial activities left to perform, we will see an increase in demand that will compensate for jobs lost.
It is important to highlight, in companies with massive automation, for the most part, the number of employees has not substantially decreased but the type of professional profile is changed.
It means that instead of having personnel to work in the productive function of the machines, there are now specialized technicians who control the production process.
In the manufacturing countries of South America, Brazil and Mexico in the first places, the arrival of the high-tech industry has revolutionized university education.
If in the 90’s, most of the highly specialized engineers and technicians arrived from abroad, now, after only 25 years, the local staff has the necessary university technical education comparable to foreign engineers.
Local companies born in the last 10 years, now are in competition with foreign companies and among themselves, improving services and optimizing costs to remain competitive in the market.
In over twenty years of experience, I haven’t known any company that has automated its production processes and subsequently returned to manual processes.
All these points help us to understand how important and necessary it is to automate the production processes of our business.
Industrial automation is increasing acceptance because it is applicable to all businesses, from food & beverage to aerospace.
The improvement in the product is evident and the value of the company increases step by step that is modernized.
Automation is no longer an option, automation is the solution.
