An Observation On The Show: "How Its Made"

[ThomWV]

I've got the TV on and the show "How Its Made" is on. Its interesting.

In the first two segments tonight they followed the building of an automobile engine and then the milling of flour for bread making. Here is what I noticed. The assembly of the engine, including very complex steps, had almost no human involvement. It was all done by robots. It was an aluminum V-6 engine, twin over head cam. Very complex, very expensive. In the production of the flour they followed it from arrival at the mill until it was packaged and going out the door. There were human hands on it at every step of the way, including the quality control. Very inexpensive bulk item, lots of people working. Expensive compact item, no people working.

What does that say?

[MercutioATC]

1. It says that the automotive industry is (or has been) a higher-profit-margin industry

and can afford more advanced innovations.

...or maybe the engine-building industry is just more adaptable to advanced technology...

[Cooley Hurd]

2. It says,"I want my robot bread!!"

[Qutzupalotl]

3. There is a question of safety of the final product.

Can't go too wrong with bread, but forget a bolt and you could kill somebody.

Also the question of scale: there's only so much flour one factory could produce, but an auto manufacturer cranks out tens of thousands of units a year. The machine to build engines probably goes a lot faster than human hands could, with greater precision and consistency. One would hope.

Of course, we all regret the loss of good manufacturing jobs in the auto industry.

BTW, I love that show, but then I'm kind of a geek.

[originalpckelly]

4. A human would probably be less accurate.

No one complains about the imprecision of their flour. :P

[Lex Talionis]

5. In the automobile industry Robotics maximizes productivity and

profits. No breaks, no unions, no vacations,no benefits to pay out. Plus its repetitive step program.The robot completes the same steps over and over. You still have to have a human to program and troubleshoot the equipment. Which is why I still have a job. In the making of flour and most food products you usually have low paid workers, who don't have very good benefits. In the food industry you almost always have to have a human inspect the product. That's my experience anyway. How its made is a very good show. One of the few I'll watch.