Even though we have seen a trend in the manufacturing industry towards robots and other automation,
it’s likely that humans will still be needed for quite some time.

For those involved in designing and building the machines for industry, there is an important aspect that needs attention – ergonomics. Ergonomics means designing machinery to minimize physical effort and discomfort, and hence maximize safety and efficiency.

Whenever you have automated machinery and people in the same faciltiy, there should be much thought given to keeping the humans safe, as well as making their jobs as easy and efficient as possible. The result of such will be harmony of man and machine, together with efficiency and improved profits.

As masters of “Yankee Ingenuity”, America should continue to be a world leader in industrial automation. But let us also not forget the value of one human in this trend.

The reason that fully automated manufacturing is not practical yet, is that we humans can still do actions that would require billions of dollars in development cost to equal purely with machines.

As we automate, we should do so responsibly by paying attention to the ergonomics.