This is a fundamental shift from how many other factories work.<p>In general, the workers are not given enough information to replicate the product. They are shown how to attach a specific sprocket to a widget. The tasks are kept so simple (nothing to do with pleasantness) that no one can learn how the whole device is created or suggest improvements. This model lends to people being replaced by robots because human capital is one of the most expensive parts of running a factory.<p>In the case of Toyota, it sounds like these are high skilled engineers who are watching, understanding and making improvements to how the robots behave.<p>While the article itself is good, the title feels like link bait to me because the engineer's job is not to replace the robot but to enhance the robot. The dynamic isn't human vs robot as in the first scenario, instead it is human & robot cooperating.<p>With these types of factories, I think we'll likely see a resurgence of factories in rich countries as the most expensive component of the factory shifts from human capital to transportation of completed goods.<p>[edited for grammer, sic]
I seem to recall a very old science fiction story about a future where nobody has to go to school. Instead, they play all day until they come of age, at which point a computer programs their mind with all of the expertise needed for whatever profession they'd be best at and would be most useful. The problem turned out to be that, while this is great, the programmed minds couldn't innovate further improvements, and so society grew stale. A small percentage of the population, including of course the protagonist, were chosen to learn stuff the hard way in order to be able to come up with new advancements. For the life of me, though, I can't remember what story that was. Any ideas?
I think this is a real indicator and validation of what the next economy will look like: humans at the apex of the arts, where imagination and craft will be highly valued in the everyday folk worker, and mundane or trivial tasks will be assigned to automatons. We will choose our own employment adventure.
“To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.”<p>That is an awesome quote.<p>Thanks for posting the article it was an interesting read.
This is so applicable to our industry. I heard Chuck Moore say once that most microcoded division routines are bad, because it's the first and only time that engineer writes one. He said his tenth division routine was far better than his first.<p>It concerns me that in the rush to build abstraction upon abstraction, we're neglecting the tools and practices that make it possible to work on and improve the fundamental layers.
Back in the early 90s, I was working in a Sony plant in Singapore that produces CRTs. It's a fully automated plant and my section are in charge of making the famous Trinitron apperture gril.
Anyway, I still remembered there was once a group of Japanese craftsman came to visit our plant.
And some some of my colleagues were assigned to attach with them and learn.
These craftsman turn out to be ladies (wow!) and they showed us how to do some of the work manually (WTF!) and the skills they have really put to shame the local guys, we stand and watch and totally stunned.
The crafmanship and professionalism in their skill is truely awesome.
What I don't understand is why the "Gods" don't say "No we won't train robots to do our jobs."<p>One of the biggest hurdles to automation in general - especially where replacing skilled workers is concerned - is in teaching (algorithmically or otherwise) the machine to replicate what the skilled worker is doing.<p>If there really is the existential crisis of "machines taking our jobs" then why are the robot trainers not pushing back? Isn't is immediately clear what they are doing?<p>I personally think everything should be automated with no mandatory human inputs for the majority of tasks - but that is hundreds of years away if ever. The key sticking point though is whether people will be willing to be "the last human to hold this job."
Reminds me of the John Henry myth:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29</a><p>probably will end the same way.
This is the normal backwash of Toyota.<p>Toyota was one of the(or probably the) first company to totally replace humans with computers in their production lines.<p>So, as a result, they are the first to say: "Well, it looks like some things computers do very badly compared to humans".<p>Today little things quality inspection is done by humans but most of the work is done by machines, so take whatever you read with a big grain of salt.<p>Yeah, there are professionals needed, my company is one of those. But most of the jobs those companies created are forever gone.
It seems to be working:<p>> <i>"In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago."</i>
Sometimes I do find programmers that do not know how to, say, install a linux distro, or at a lower level, don't understand what a data bus is, or how one bit of information is actually stored in a computer.<p>> Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines.<p>This is also the spirit of the nand2tetris [1] course, currently running on coursera [2]. The book is a really entertaining read too. Depending on how familiar you are with electronics you may be able to outpace the video course quite a bit.<p>Also,<p>> “Fully automated machines don’t evolve on their own,”<p>not yet... :p<p>1: <a href="http://www.nand2tetris.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nand2tetris.org/</a><p>2: <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/nand2tetris1" rel="nofollow">https://www.coursera.org/course/nand2tetris1</a>
So should developers learn more about how low level libraries work so they can make better code? ie, should we be fostering more Kami-Sama developers? Or do you really not need to know that stuff, and focus instead on putting together higher level libraries into awesome apps because business is business and we have deadlines?
> <i>“If there is ever a technology that’s flawless and could always make perfect products, then we will be ready and willing to install that machine,” Kawai said. “There’s no machine that is eternally stable.”</i><p>This seems like a nice reformulation of Turing's Entscheidungsproblem
The idea reminds me of this SciFi story from 1949: <a href="http://escapepod.org/2013/10/28/ep419-expediter/" rel="nofollow">http://escapepod.org/2013/10/28/ep419-expediter/</a>
It's an avowed aim of the Toyota Production System<p>Automation with a human touch<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomation</a>
I guess a programming analogy might be the "radical" idea that it might make sense to let highly paid engineers read through the source code of libraries that you use.
There is a big implicit "for now" after nearly every sentence in the article. Sure, we don't have machines that can autonomously optimize themselves. For now.