Job losses are coming to engineering and manufacturing production from AI and automation. These disciplines have seen this happen before with the merchant availability of Computer Aided Design/Drafting, Circuit Board Layout/Design, and Multi-axis machine tool production software suites. Software eliminated the need for rooms of draftsman, blueprint warehouses, circuit layout tables, and paper production drawings for metal parts. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will increase the specialized nature of some jobs while vastly improving the productivity of getting production done.
Just as white-collar executives now have speech-to-document writing tools (and the word processing pool of typists are decades gone) engineers have CAD software and simulation tools (SolidWorks, Autodesk, etc.). Workflow and AI-supports are being integrated into traditional engineering and manufacturing software suites increasing efficiency and speeding production. Controversy follows as continued updates and expanded tools change work and likely eliminate jobs.
Media is talking about AI changing the jobs of workers from ‘automation’. Engineering and manufacturing software and services providers have been ‘automating’ for decades. Automation eliminated job functions like ‘blueprint copiers’ or ‘manufacturing data typists’. Work tasks "on the computer" have been eliminated. More complex functions and operations “in the computer” are being implemented and deployed using AI-based features in multiple products and services. If widely adopted, the tools will reduce jobs and speed up production. This is a challenge to many jobs, loyal customers, advocates, and competitors because it is likely to eliminate jobs by raising productivity.
Functional integration of automation for conformance, compliance, and quality checks are still being worked out in details with AI-enabling. Computer implementation of operations research algorithms (like non-linear programming, multi-goal optimization, and scheduling) have automated many "manual" planning functions. Complex supply chain, logistics, and multi-location production planning (keiretsu, kan ban, outsourcers, vendor managed inventory, etc.), and production management operations have transformed highly skilled rules as materials and production focuses transformed to enterprise resource planning. With each change manufacturing productivity and roles improved -- with some jobs eliminated.
Project management is a discipline with roots in Operations Research, Systems Analysis, Time and Motion, and other analytics and mathematical techniques. In less than a Century project management has gone from a highly personalized skillset to a highly monitored data driven set of processes. A highly respected marketplace has been created by extending products and services to workflow, collaboration, and projects at scale. The productivity and workflow advances are now leveraged and extended by AI-based functions, workflow integration with other software (like ERP suites), and focused features (such as those from in automated simulation and engineering test). The potential is for even more AI features and offerings to continue to increase productivity. The reduced task effort levels will need fewer workers as more gets done with less (time and people).
Economists don't see the overall spend on "automation" and "computer systems" improving macro-economic productivity in the same ratios. This ignores qualitative changes in process, quality expectations of products and services, and technological complexity of current generation production and products. For example, traditional quality control techniques from vehicle manufacturing were totally inadequate to address the quality requirements of semiconductors or current aerospace products. Enterprises will pursue deployment of AI-enhanced features in engineering and manufacturing software suites if they provide productivity gains.
In the Alien Invader framework EkaLore normally discusses enterprises that are going to disrupt their own loyal customers, large scale users, and business model arrangements. They are deploying the capital (even by mergers/acquisitions) to accelerate inhouse work to add features and capabilities. AI-features are applying “creative destruction” to increase the value of their many different products and services– being more productive at highly creative, technical, and production functions at scale.
In our next release, EkaLore will look at a high-level overview of what is coming.
For additional information on Real World Artificial Intelligence or Alien Invasions see http://www.ekalore.com
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