cross-posted from: https://futurology.today/post/4251786

Bringing manufacturing jobs home has been in the news lately, but it’s not the 1950s or even the 1980s anymore. Today’s factories need far less humans. Global car sales were 78,000,000 in 2024 and the global automotive workforce was 2,500,000. However, if the global workforce was as efficient as this Honda factory, it could build those cars with only 20% of that workforce.

If something can be done for 20% of the cost, that is probably the direction of travel. Bear in mind too, factories will get even more automated and efficient than today’s 2025 Honda factory.

It’s not improbable within a few years we will have 100% robot-staffed factories that need no humans at all. Who’ll have the money to buy all the cars they make is another question entirely.

Details of the new Honda factory.

  • LughAEnglish
    2·
    23 hours ago

    The amount of precise manipulation needed to do something as simple as repair the feeder mechanism on a welder,

    If robots can build cars, I’d guess they can manage that.

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      31·
      23 hours ago

      Building a car on a set-piece line, and recognizing a quality defect, assessing the cause of the defect, and repairing the mechanism that caused the defect are completely different engineering challenges. One is very suited towards robotic adoption, the other is not and will require robotic technologies that do not exist to be applied it ways not yet understood in a cost effective manner that has not been explained.

    • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      15 hours ago

      If robots can build cars, I’d guess they can manage that.

      Robots aren’t magic, they’re programmed to do one thing only. Faults in machines can occur in all sorts of ways a preprogrammed robot arm can’t fix. You need a human to figure it out