Word: auto
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...this week's story Redman interviewed robot entrepreneurs, consultants and engineers, as well as managers and workers at Detroit auto companies, the nation's major robot users. "People kept asking me if I thought that robots would ultimately cause more problems than they solved," he says. "I have no ready answer to that, but I have learned that, despite the wonders they can work, they are incredibly stupid and remarkably inept compared to humans...
...vacuum-cleaner plant from several hundred men to eight. "Unless we start doing something to increase U.S. productivity, the United States will be out of business as a country," says Mirabal, who returned from Japan to find that GE was using only ten robots; today it has 111. The auto industry now buys about 40% of industrial robots, both in the U.S. and worldwide, but electrical firms have also become major users...
...fact that the robot's instructions can be changed is critically important to its industrial use. A standard assembly line must produce a large amount (about 1,000 units a day in the auto industry) to operate economically, and it takes months to alter or renovate its component machines; a robot can be reprogrammed for a new task in a few minutes. Furthermore, at least 60% of U.S. manufacturing is done in batches too small for assembly lines. Robots can do many of those jobs, and it is estimated that they can reduce costs in small-lot manufacturing...
...jobs for workers to be retrained for." That is probably an exaggeration, but Charles Cook, president of the United Auto Workers Local 7, which represents K-car workers at Chrysler's Jefferson plant, is equally suspicious. Says he: "Our workers are not worried now about robots taking their jobs, but once the company gets more of those goddam things working, we'll have problems...
...approved by the legislature, the tax would be the state's first local fundraising device other than auto excise and property taxes, Sullivan added...