February 2016  |  Craftsman’s Cribsheet #41

 

The weldability of steels is influenced primarily by the carbon content. Carbon equivalents of 0.35 or less are safe to weld without any pre-weld or postweld heat treatments required. At higher carbon levels, steels may require either pre- or post-weld heat treatment in order to prevent stress buildup and weld cracking.

 

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“When we install this automated line we can eliminate three jobs.”
This is probably the stupidest thing that I have ever overheard. (I was eating lunch at a rest stop on the turnpike home from a recent trip.)
There are at least 600,000 high tech manufacturing jobs currently unfilled in the US and Canada.
We know that there are about 391,000 Baby Boomer generation machinists that will be leaving the workforce in the next few years.

  • Who in their right mind wants to eliminate people?
  • They have proven that they can come to work
  • They have proven they can do the work
  • They have proven that they can add value

The point of automation isn’t to eliminate jobs. It is to eliminate non-value added labor.
The employees have already demonstrated that they can add value. Automation should free them up to add even more, higher value added to your operations.
I believe that people should be engaged at their highest and best use. Or, as Norbert Wiener once wrote – The Human Use of Human Beings.

The inventor of the feedback circuit figured this out a long time ago
The inventor of the feedback circuit figured this out a long time ago

The point of automation is to let you elevate your existing talent to their highest and best use.
Any thing else is The 8th Waste- unused creativity of our people.
Automate to elevate
Automate to elevate. Not to eliminate. Good people are hard enough to find.
Why would you eliminate your great ones?