Londoners: PM 'not ruling out' Tube strike ban

[Bear]

Machines are not skilled...their human designers and operators are...machines simply do as they are designed or programmed to do. And Amigafan is correct in what he says..the premium you pay for some hand-crafted items..such as a car for example is about the quality of the product, not simply the fact that is was hand-crafted. You can look at things like furniture and jewellery for the better examples of man over machine when it comes to quality of fine work.

You are right in that some things are easier and more precise with a machine...each item being exactly as before..but then that is not always desirable or needed.

You pay a premium for a hand crafted product because of the skill and the amount of man hours needed to create such a thing. A machine made thing will nearly always surpass the quality of a purely hand made item due to its accuracy and repeatablility.

I agree the machine takes the skill out of the manufacturing process

 

[Bluebook]

That's what Cameron want's. No staff, muggins goes up people on trains go down so he sells it off to his mates the same his doing to the NHS.

Exactly! It's always about saving and making money but telling us things like "good value for money" and "efficiency"

 

[Deleted member 66701]

I agree the machine takes the skill out of the manufacturing process

Nonsense - it just replaces one skill with another.

Question - who makes the cnc machines? Low skill countries like Pakistan, India, Africa or high skill countries like us, Germany, America and Japan?

Imo this is a good thing - technology replacing manual labour. We're better as a country if you employ 10 people on twice the wage to maintain and operate the machines rather than 20 people on half the wage to produce the items manually. Of course it's then societies responsibility to ensure support for those 10 people now looking for a job.

 

[Freefaller]

anyone that thinks automation is dangerous or poor is rather simple in my opinion. Mass production with high quality robotics and machinery boosts economy. Also, it doesn't negate the need of people, people will have more time to innovate, improve, learn, develop, and removes the need for human interfacing with manufacturing which causes variations. You will still need human beings to check the processes, check the machinery, maintain it, develop enhancements etc...

Some things will also always need human intervention. Talking about railways, the number of interventions (inspections) needed on the lines is massive, and causes disruptions to services, and is also dangerous - why not use automatic sensors to detect things and then (only then) send someone in to fix the problem, upskilling those people to analyse the data being reported back from the sensors and learning to forecast, plan and improve maintenance thus minimising the disruption to rail lines.

People are too comfy doing their jobs and not pushing themselves - automation is great and minimises the human element - but doesn't negate the need for humans at all - it just changes the scope of the work needed.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

Some things will also always need human intervention. Talking about railways, the number of interventions (inspections) needed on the lines is massive, and causes disruptions to services, and is also dangerous - why not use automatic sensors to detect things and then (only then) send someone in to fix the problem, upskilling those people to analyse the data being reported back from the sensors and learning to forecast, plan and improve maintenance thus minimising the disruption to rail lines.

Most of the inspections are as a result of automated checks flagging something up - our railways already have automatic checking of track gauge, signalling, brake wear, wheel run outs and overhead line continuity* - in fact, there aren't many items that aren't automatically checked.

The trouble is the automated checks always throws up alerts as the infrastructure is so poorly maintained and invested in - in fact the automatic checking systems regularly fail as they aren't maintained properly themselves!

*Source - my was a safety inspector for the North West before he retired.

 

[Freefaller]

Indeed. That's why you need someone who understands the checks and can be proactive about the data rather than just clicking a button. That's where we can improve but then again I am working on a new infrastructure project (crossrail) so hopefully there will be the opportunity to enhance all of that rather than all this patchwork fixing.

 

[Glaucus]

Machines are not skilled...their human designers and operators are...machines simply do as they are designed or programmed to do. And Amigafan is correct in what he says..the premium you pay for some hand-crafted items..such as a car for example is about the quality of the product, not simply the fact that is was hand-crafted. You can look at things like furniture and jewellery for the better examples of man over machine when it comes to quality of fine work.

You are right in that some things are easier and more precise with a machine...each item being exactly as before..but then that is not always desirable or needed.

Not at all, you can't compare mass produced stuff, to high precision stuff.
High precision stuff is not hand made at all. You simply cant get the tolerances needed by hand. This is very different to mass produced furntature turned out for a cheap price. Look at high grade technical parts for a start, take bearings as i used to test them. They are machine made down to parts of a micron, something you simply can not achieve by hand.
Hand made comes with a premium, for two reasons man hours and people like it, it does not mean it will be the best quality though. It will be far far far far higher than street stuff though.

 

[pitchfork]

anyone that thinks automation is dangerous or poor is rather simple in my opinion. Mass production with high quality robotics and machinery boosts economy. Also, it doesn't negate the need of people, people will have more time to innovate, improve, learn, develop, and removes the need for human interfacing with manufacturing which causes variations. You will still need human beings to check the processes, check the machinery, maintain it, develop enhancements etc...

It's like you get this crap straight from your operations year 1 textbook, it doesn't work like that in industry, they sack off people and use it as costsaving. A company won't pay line staff to "innovate, improve, learn, develop" this isn't some new age lab experiment, this is the real world.

A boost to the economy is pointless if wider society is paying the cost, and currently a lot of "boosts" to the economy are just this, wealth funnelling to the rich. And ultimately, robotics and heavily automation only work for high volume, low variation operations.

Some things will also always need human intervention. Talking about railways, the number of interventions (inspections) needed on the lines is massive, and causes disruptions to services, and is also dangerous - why not use automatic sensors to detect things and then (only then) send someone in to fix the problem, upskilling those people to analyse the data being reported back from the sensors and learning to forecast, plan and improve maintenance thus minimising the disruption to rail lines.

Because it would be expensive and restrictive, transport is too dynamic an industry for that

People are too comfy doing their jobs and not pushing themselves - automation is great and minimises the human element - but doesn't negate the need for humans at all - it just changes the scope of the work needed.
Robotics replace jobs, if you think companies are going to get robots to do 20 peoples jobs and keep them all on to fanny about running the machines, you're very much mistaken. You rely on the assumption everyone is career driven, and in a wider society, many people are not.

This is the type of twaddle the consultancy firms always seem to come out with, it's like they live in la la land or something.

 

[Freefaller]

Funny I work in the strategic projects and innovation team for a railway, as well as being part of the lean six sigma group. it's quite a big deal with a lot of money being thrown at it, furthermore, a lot of people are being actively engaged and involved in this sort of thinking. My year 1 operational management handbook is so dog eared that I've upgraded to at least a few more years. I'm a big boy now!

And it does work like that if you're in the right environment and you're able to shift the culture. In engineering and construction it's what makes companies stand apart from others. Furthermore I've seen it, and see it work. It's not a bad thing. You're right about transport being dynamic, but that doesn't stop enhancing the data and improving the decisions made and automating the process to a certain degree. You will always need human intervention, but humans are poor at repetitive jobs, they do better when they can work dynamically and in a collaborative and open minded environment. It's tough, but that's what makes my job so interesting, to change the culture, embrace the future and try and come up with innovative practices to make people's jobs easier and more effective, allowing them to further enhance the very work they are doing.

Don't understand the negativity?

 

[Tefal]

This is the type of twaddle the consultancy firms always seem to come out with, it's like they live in la la land or something.

out of curiosity then, would you rather airliners still had flight engineers chopping and changing valves etc on the engines from memory or the current much safer more efficient computer system that did sadly get rid of the flight engineer?

 

[Tefal]

Machines are not skilled...their human designers and operators are...machines simply do as they are designed or programmed to do. And Amigafan is correct in what he says..the premium you pay for some hand-crafted items..such as a car for example is about the quality of the product, not simply the fact that is was hand-crafted. You can look at things like furniture and jewellery for the better examples of man over machine when it comes to quality of fine work.

You are right in that some things are easier and more precise with a machine...each item being exactly as before..but then that is not always desirable or needed.

for the car though it's not technically quality for the reason it's hand made rather than machine assembled. It's like aircraft, they're all hand made, because to get a machine to do the jobs the people do you'd basically need a fully humanoid robot, it's just complicated an environment for a robotic arm to navigate.

it's not because we do a better job than the machine just the machine wont fit/be way to complicated to program for the fact every item is unique/different.

also it's ****ing hilarious when some of the automated machines **** up cause they work fast they make BIG mistakes before they can be stopped, one of our lver's (drills and rivets stringers to wing skins) had one of the stringers come out of it's clamp at one end and droop, ****ing thing just kept on drilling and completely destroyed the stringer, like damn near cut it in half the way the holes went out and across it. fortunately the expensive skin could be saved, but in the time it took a team of men to attach one stringer to the skin to get it ready to go back in the machine the thing had done another 2 entire panels, it just wouldn't be feasible to have that job done by people and meet deadlines for production.

 

[Tefal]

Oh, and most of the items I have CNC'd I have to send back due to poor tolerance. CNC is only as accurate as the operator and the person that maintains the machine The only reason I have parts CNC'd is to save time, not because it's more accurate. I can do better with a bottle of oil and a file.

why on earth are you sourcing your work to a company that doesn't meet your tolerances then?

Find a better CNC company.

Could you make that with a file and a bottle of oil by hand?

 

[Freefaller]

A lot of the quality inspections are still human and besides even if lots of alarms go off, someone has to interpret them and know what they mean and how to fix it. As technology improves so do the processes need to be reengineered and tested which has to be done by humans. I see improvement and innovation not as a job killer but as enhancing what we've got.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

why on earth are you sourcing your work to a company that doesn't meet your tolerances then?

Find a better CNC company.

I use multiple companies. Most of the time they are ok, but I've had to send something back at least once to every company I've tried. Machines go out of spec occasionally - it's to be expected.

Could you make that with a file and a bottle of oil by hand?

Sure. Doesn't look any harder than the con rod and piston I made at college.

 

[Tefal]

I use multiple companies. Most of the time they are ok, but I've had to send something back at least once to every company I've tried. Machines go out of spec occasionally - it's to be expected.

what are your tollerences and are they within what the company advertises? because im surprised the company hasn't checked your part is to spec before sending it out


i know things go out of spec but they should be calibrated regularly and all parts checked before shipping surely.

 

[Bear]

Nonsense - it just replaces one skill with another.

Question - who makes the cnc machines? Low skill countries like Pakistan, India, Africa or high skill countries like us, Germany, America and Japan?

Imo this is a good thing - technology replacing manual labour. We're better as a country if you employ 10 people on twice the wage to maintain and operate the machines rather than 20 people on half the wage to produce the items manually. Of course it's then societies responsibility to ensure support for those 10 people now looking for a job.

No you are talking nonsense because you are talking about different things, I was talking about de-skilling a task using machinery. I was responding to Castiel that hand made does not naturally equal quality.

A car worker at Aston Martin hand crafting body panels has probably gained those skills over many many years. An operator loading sheet metal into a press doesn't need to have much skill hence, the job has been de-skilled. That another job has been created in the maintenance of that machine has nothing to do with the de-skilling of the body panel maker.

It's the skill and the man hours that sets the cost of the product in the case of the car, just because it is hand made doesn't necessarily mean it is of high quality.

 

[Bear]

I use multiple companies. Most of the time they are ok, but I've had to send something back at least once to every company I've tried. Machines go out of spec occasionally - it's to be expected.

If you are purchasing for a company then it is bad purchasing and a lack of quality control / communication. You shouldn't ever have to send something back as the supplier should tell you it is out of spec and you either get it in on a concession or reject it and get it made again to your drawings.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

If you are purchasing for a company then it is bad purchasing and a lack of quality control / communication. You shouldn't ever have to send something back as the supplier should tell you it is out of spec and you either get it in on a concession or reject it and get it made again to your drawings.

I'm purchasing for personal use. And refunds/remakes are never an issue.

 

[Amp34]

So rather than your union/place of employment paying a better wage with benefits you want their members to "suffer" like you? What is wrong with us Brits ?

True, I'm going to start striking tomorrow because I want an extra weeks holiday and a 10% pay rise... Sorry no, it won't be because of that, that will just be included in the bill, alongside the main reason of the corny taking away "hot water" signs from hot water taps in the bathroom.

That's basically what most people who use the tube think of them and what appears to be the case in most situations. They claim safety while the byproduct always seems to be more pay/holiday.


I don't believe they should be banned, however they (and other important professions) should have to go to court and prove they have done everything in their power (and that the employer are being unreasonable) before being allowed to.

 

[Castiel]

Not at all, you can't compare mass produced stuff, to high precision stuff.
High precision stuff is not hand made at all. You simply cant get the tolerances needed by hand. This is very different to mass produced furntature turned out for a cheap price. Look at high grade technical parts for a start, take bearings as i used to test them. They are machine made down to parts of a micron, something you simply can not achieve by hand.
Hand made comes with a premium, for two reasons man hours and people like it, it does not mean it will be the best quality though. It will be far far far far higher than street stuff though.

I think the point is that Machines are not actually skilled..their operators and designers are the skilled..a machine can only do what it is designed or programmed to do.

And I made the point of stating that there is a place for both and that some fine work is unsuitable for a machine and vice versa....