Re: There's a few things....
One of my customers has a production line for professional vacuum cleaners. In the past few years they managed to automate most of it, now the only steps done by people are driving the forklifts with parts from the warehouse, unloading them on the line, and packing the vacuums in the cardboard boxes.
There are still plenty of people in the factory but most of them are tending to the machines when they fail, and handle exceptions and all sorts of unforeseen problems.
Overall the management is happy with the result and they'll move towards even more automation, the next step is to use automated forklifts. The job positions are more attractive and easier to fill, it seems nowadays people aren't really keen to do long repetitive work on production lines and they have a hard time hiring. While, at the same time, the factory gets to be cost competitive with less expensive countries.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
