Currently, the world is all about mechanization. No matter where you turn there is someone trying to design how to make something to do production in a way that a person no longer has to do it. We as humans love having things done for us. No matter what it is, we would like to have computers that would do it for us. In this day and age there are already a hundreds of things that require very little of us to get done.



The same is true of commercial enterprises the world over. To businesses there is the matter of making more money and they are always looking out for ways to cut the costs to make the products they offer. This is where factory automation comes into play. A industry that relies heavily on automation has cheaper labor costs, making it less expensive for the firm to make products thereby increasing profits all the way around.

There is some debate on whether or not an automated factory is a productive idea. Automation relies on machines, like robots to perform tasks that were previously performed by humans. One of the issues is the problem that these robots and machines are very expensive for the most part, which means a very high capital investment for the business. Now they could, in theory, recover the investment in only a few years by not having to pay an employee to do the job, but what if the process becomes unnecessary? This can mean that they spent a lot of money that was redundant.

Next is the fact that robots do not have the ability to think or solve problems without assistance from outside parties, namely humans. Most observers would recommend that robots only do the most mundane tasks in a factory so they have no requirement to think. possibly so but what if something aborts with the process. Does the robot know to stop? Will it be able to solve the problem on its own? The answer to both of those questions is of course NO. The robot must be instructed what to do by a human and has no intelligence of its own.

The other issue is that using factory automation takes jobs away from the people who want them. This is the largest sore spot in the automation debate as it is known today. This is occassionally true and it could harm the economy because the more people that are out of jobs the worse the economy is. Unless these people are trained for better jobs, that are more interesting and more human. Who wants to punch holes in the same pattern, in the same part every minute of every work day!

It is a beneficial plan for all intents and purposes to fully automate factories. The debate about this rages on but it is unlikely that machines will ever replace us humans fully.