OT - the future of work?

[john.k]

Powerful unions are bitterly opposed to remote working.....the potential for worker exploitation and union extermination are endless.....as to productivity declines ....this is only the benevolent phase.....pretty soon the worker is on the Amazon model ...employer is able to incrementally increase work pace and load until the individual is showing fatigue,this is then set as a baseline for payment.This is the future of work from home............Now there is nothing new about this in principle....its been used in the garment industry for 200 years....just that oversight is now 24/7 ,not once a week at work pickup run time.

 

[Trueturning]

Powerful unions are bitterly opposed to remote working.....the potential for worker exploitation and union extermination are endless.....as to productivity declines ....this is only the benevolent phase.....pretty soon the worker is on the Amazon model ...employer is able to incrementally increase work pace and load until the individual is showing fatigue,this is then set as a baseline for payment.This is the future of work from home............Now there is nothing new about this in principle....its been used in the garment industry for 200 years....just that oversight is now 24/7 ,not once a week at work pickup run time.

Lots of Amazon jobs around for $15.00 per hour. It is interesting. More jobs which approach this threshold of pay are increasing. That is good and bad. Mostly good. Because of decreased outsourcing of jobs and industry, less illegal Immigration, less H1B visa workers all help to allow real earnings to grow the first time in decades. Businesses which could not survive except by paying low wages must go. Just as any scheme which takes advantage of American labor and degrades the value and dignity of human beings. It has become so bad that Socialism is a strongly considered path. Basic principle is that in Capitalism a person enjoys the fruit of their contributions. To actively deny that is asking for trouble and degrading human beings. They tend to rebel.

 

[Newman109]

As said in post #1, a bit of distancing doesn't eliminate machining for thousands of small shops or for heavily automated near-lights-out shops. And even labor intensive auto assembly lines are now up and running - but perhaps with more automation to come.

Pretty sure it was you who just inquired, as a one man band, about getting into a gun parts manufacturing business. One assumes a machine tool might be involved. If a whole lot of people are similarly planning to set up shop, that would be a a shift. Not sure, though, who's going to buy or aggregate the output?

As beege notes, the "paperless factory" idea has been around for ages. GE bought half of one of our companies decades ago and was all over that. Turns out it was a lot harder than their PR people imagined -- or their counterparts at Siemens. But the tech is changing.

Biz Insurance for a Gun Mfr.................

 

[Shawnrs]

I would not mind working at home some days but not every day, I need to get away from the wife and kids.

 

[mhajicek]

Japanese convenience store chain begins testing remote controlled robot staff in Tokyo | SoraNews24 -Japan News-

I've long thought there could be a market for haptic telepresence robots that allow a specialist to do hands-on work remotely. Imagine a Johnny 5 (with better hands) that you control from your desk with haptic sleeves/gloves, foot pedals, and a VR headset. Could find applications in several fields of work.

 

[mhajicek]

Toyota's T-HR3 Humanoid Robot Uses HTC Vive for Telepresence - YouTube

Using Haptic Gloves to Control an Amazing Telepresence Robot! - YouTube

 

[CarbideBob]

I'd like to watch a machinist work remotely.

I have run carbide tool grinding machines in Traverse City from my desk in Flint as far back as 1997.
Technically this remote machine control was illegal at the time.
I told the shop owner to plug a second phone line into the jack on the machine and watch as I showed him how I would run a part.
Stay on the other phone line with me and keep your fingers away from the machine no matter what.
I could load, grind, measure, and unload parts but I could not stage them. This would have needed another robot.
This with no internet at 9600 baud so think about what you can do now with all that bandwidth.

One piece bastard multi feature part on a B-Port or 10ee? Going to need a very fancy robot on the working end.
On a cnc less but still in job shop mode the load, unload, measure of a million part variations.

Perhaps one good thing about this bug is that it has upset the apple cart and sped this up particularly in office and engineering jobs.
If there had been no net this impossible which leads to other questions.
Remote, zoom or other meetings still feel so distant and strange to me because I am use to face to face, body language, before and after chats.
The new kids may find this easier and they are the the next gen to run all this. They grew up will cell phones, the net, and all as communication they like.

The world always changes, the working world change faster right now.
Bob

 

[NC Rick]

We are a small 3 person shop and doing our best to cope with government rules and controls, the challenges are to even know what they might be. We do sales, service, manufacturing and other stuff. One of my employees is working remotely and I keep looking at ways to streamline what he does. Ultimate streamlining would eliminate the position and Further protect me and my company from potentially missing some unknown rules that at the least cost money and at the worst, put me out of business.

I did not go for the PPP, my job is to adapt, not at all to be reliant on some taxpayers handouts.

 

[PeteM]

Curious which level of government is running things in Asheville, NC? Around here, the County Health Officer was first to have regulations - with a group of Counties coordinating. Now the State is calling the shots, with Counties doing the interpretation and enforcement, if necessary. We don't seem to be having Town / County / State disagreements to any great extent. Feds are out of it, with the exception of providing services (CDC etc.) to the State.

The one change likely out of all this may be greater coordination between adjacent towns and counties. Stuff like viruses, wildfires, storms and power outages doesn't seem to respect County borders - while the State is too large to have a good sense of regional conditions.

 

[Mike1974]

What is this "going back" to work you speak of? We never closed!

 

[PeteM]

What is this "going back" to work you speak of? We never closed!

Mike, it's not "back to work" but "how might work change in the future?" Sounds like nothing has changed or is likely to change in your line of work?

 

[Mike1974]

Mike, it's not "back to work" but "how might work change in the future?" Sounds like nothing has changed or is likely to change in your line of work?

I didn't quote whoever said it, but was replying to them about them saying something like "just get your ass back to work".

We have gotten busier. I don't see things changing too much for us. Our products are labor intensive, so really, maybe an engineer or 2 could work remotely for a short time. But relying on email for a simple "is this dimension correct", especially if I am in the middle of programming would be quite the hindrance.

 

[EmGo]

relying on email for a simple "is this dimension correct", especially if I am in the middle of programming would be quite the hindrance.

We use sms for little stuff like that, a lot. Works okay. Better than the phone sometimes because it's written down.

 

[bryan_machine]

An app I've been using to communicate with a collaborator in Uganda is telegram - like instant messaging but runs on PC as well as phone, can move big files, and so forth. Can keep a record. Of course, both parties need to have the app.

 

[Scottl]

I said some time back in another thread that the future of work COULD be a human/automation collaboration for a new economy of semi-custom products where properly trained humans do what they do best with AI/machines to do the tedious detail work.

Imagine talking to a product specialist who fleshes out your dream "widget" and then initiates the automated (or semi-automated) production after you approve. A crude form of this exists today where "sketch artists" use software to create images of suspects.

I've long felt that machines are best at complementing human workers rather than replacing them.

PS: Coworkers thought I was crazy when back in the 70s I predicted that computers would someday help colorize old black and white films and even create sophisticated animation under human guidance. Both are well-established facts today.

 

[CarbideBob]

When cncs came out I had machinists that refused to work with such.
I put out that we will provide the teaching of this strange Gcode thing and you get paid to learn it.
Still holdouts. "I am a machinist and don't need this new computer shit".
Bob

 

[DDoug]

When cncs came out I had machinists that refused to work with such.
I put out that we will provide the teaching of this strange Gcode thing and you get paid to learn it.
Still holdouts. "I am a machinist and don't need this new computer shit".
Bob

Yup, same with CAD....heard "the computer will suck your brains out" this from seasoned, top level designers....

 

[Shawnrs]

Yup, same with CAD....heard "the computer will suck your brains out" this from seasoned, top level designers....

I think I may have retired a few of those seasoned designers when they found out I could design a fixture in the morning, program it to run at night, install the hardware the next morning and have a shit load of parts by the end of the day.

 

[Scottl]

Yup, same with CAD....heard "the computer will suck your brains out" this from seasoned, top level designers....

Yup. I remember board draftsmen who thought it was a passing fad. The smart ones signed up for training.

I still remember trying to explain to one old timer that CAD could stretch or shrink a dimension on an entire part in less time than it took him to erase pencil lines. What he couldn't seem to grasp was that the computer wasn't actually designing the part but replacing the tedious manual drafting methods. The hooman bean was still in charge of the process.

 

[DDoug]

Yup. I remember board draftsmen who thought it was a passing fad. The smart ones signed up for training.

I still remember trying to explain to one old timer that CAD could stretch or shrink a dimension on an entire part in less time than it took him to erase pencil lines. What he couldn't seem to grasp was that the computer wasn't actually designing the part but replacing the tedious manual drafting methods. The hooman bean was still in charge of the process.

Even better, explain how the lines he's drawing (on the screen) are driving the machine tool....