automation

Robot Makers Spread Global Gospel of Automation

Well, that wasn’t actually the word used this week at the Automate 2013 trade show held here through Thursday, but the sentiment was the same. During a presentation on Monday, Henrik I. Christensen, the Kuka Chair of Robotics at Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Computing, sharply criticized a recent “60 Minutes” report on automation that was based on the work of the M.I.T. economists Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson.

The two economists in 2011 wrote “Race Against the Machine,” a book that renewed the debate about the relationship between the pace of automation and job growth. They argue that the pace of automation is accelerating and that robotics is pushing into new areas of the work force like white-collar jobs that were previously believed to be beyond the scope of computers.

During his talk, Dr. Christensen said that the evidence indicated that the opposite was true. While automation may transform the work force and eliminate certain jobs, it also creates new kinds of jobs that are generally better paying and that require higher-skilled workers.

“We see today that the U.S. is still the biggest manufacturing country in terms of dollar value,” Dr. Christensen said. “It’s also important to remember that manufacturing produces more jobs in associated areas than anything else.”

An official of the International Federation of Robotics acknowledged that the automation debate had sprung back to life in the United States, but he said that America was alone in its anxiety over robots and automation.

“This is not happening in either Europe or Japan,” said Andreas Bauer, chairman of the federation’s industrial robot suppliers group and an executive at Kuka Robotics, a German robot maker.

To buttress its claim that automation is not a job killer but instead a way for the United States to compete against increasingly advanced foreign competitors, the industry group reported findings on Tuesday that it said it would publish in February. The federation said the industry would directly and indirectly create from 1.9 million to 3.5 million jobs globally by 2020.

The federation held a news media event at which two chief executives of small American manufacturers described how they had been able to both increase employment and compete against foreign companies by relying heavily on automation and robots.

“Automation has allowed us to compete on a global basis. It has absolutely created jobs in southwest Michigan,” said Matt Tyler, chief executive of Vickers Engineering, an auto parts supplier. “Had it not been for automation, we would not have beat our Japanese competitor; we would not have beat our Chinese competitor; we would not have beat our Mexican competitor. It’s a fact.”

Also making the case was Drew Greenblatt, the widely quoted president and owner of Marlin Steel, a Baltimore manufacturer of steel products that has managed to expand and add jobs by deploying robots and other machines to increase worker productivity.

“In December, we won a job from a Chicago company that for over a decade has bought from China,” he said. “It’s a sheet-metal bracket; 160,000 sheet-metal brackets, year in, year out. They were made in China, now they’re made in Baltimore, using steel from a plant in Indiana and the robot was made in Connecticut.”

A German robotics engineer argued that automation was essential to preserve jobs and also vital to make it possible for national economies to support social programs.

“Countries that have high productivity can afford to have a good social system and a good health system,” said Alexander Verl, head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering in Germany. “You see that to some extent in Germany or in Sweden. These are countries that are highly automated but at the same time they spend money on elderly care and the health system.”

In the report presented Tuesday by the federation, the United States lags Germany, South Korea and Japan in the density of manufacturing robots employed (measured as the number of robots per 10,000 human workers). South Korea, in particular, sharply increased its robot-to-worker ratio in the last three years and Germany has twice the robot density as the United States, according to a presentation made by John Dulchinos, a board member of the Robot Industries Association and the chief executive of Adept Technology, a Pleasanton, Calif., maker of robots.

The report indicates that although China and Brazil are increasing the number of robots in their factories, they still trail the advanced manufacturing countries.

Mr. Dulchinos said that the United States had only itself to blame for the decline of its manufacturing sector in the last decade.

“I can tell you that in the late 1990s my company’s biggest segment was the cellular phone market,” he said. “Almost overnight that industry went away, in part because we didn’t do as good a job as was required to make that industry competitive.”

He said that if American robots had been more advanced it would have been possible for those companies to maintain the lowest cost of production in the United States.

“They got all packed up and shipped to China,” Mr. Dulchinos said. “And so you fast-forward to today and there are over a billion cellphones produced a year and not a single one is produced in the United States.”

Yet, in the face of growing anxiety about the effects of automation on the economy, there were a number of bright spots. The industry is now generating $25 billion in annual revenue. The federation expects 1.6 million robots to be produced each year by 2015.

Mr. Greenblatt said that one of the advantages of robots was they did not take breaks.

“My robots are going to work during the Super Bowl,” he said. “Do you know how popular I would be to ask my employees to work during the Super Bowl?”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/technology/robot-makers-spread-global-gospel-of-automation.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The Search: The Shifting Definition of Worker Loyalty

Just last month, Lynda Gratton, a workplace expert, proclaimed that it was. In The Financial Times, she said that it had been “killed off through shortening contracts, outsourcing, automation and multiple careers.”

Ms. Gratton seemed to be echoing the comments of many other career specialists who say that loyalty has been sacrificed to the realities of a fast-paced economy. It’s sad if this sterling virtue — so prized in a spouse, a friend, a pet — is now out of place in the business world.

But the situation may be more complicated. Depending on how you define it, loyalty may not be dead, but is just playing out differently in the workplace.

Loyalty implies sticking with someone or something even if it goes against your own self-interest. Especially in business, loyalty carries the expectation that you will be rewarded for this allegiance.

Fifty years ago, an employee could stay at the same company for decades, and the company reciprocated with long-term protection and care, said Tammy Erickson, an author and work-force consultant. Many were guaranteed longtime employment along with health care and a pension.

Now many companies cannot or will not hold up their end of the bargain, so why should the employees hold up theirs? Given the opportunity, they’ll take their skills and their portable 401(k)’s elsewhere.

These days, Ms. Gratton writes, trust is more important than loyalty: “Loyalty is about the future — trust is about the present.” Serial career monogamy is now the order of the day, she says.

Ms. Erickson says that the quid pro quo of modern employment is more likely to be: As long as I work for you, I promise to have the relevant skills and engage fully in my work; in return you’ll pay me fairly, but I don’t expect you to care for me when I’m 110.

For some baby boomers, this shift has been hard to accept. Many started their careers assuming that they would be rewarded based on long tenure. Now they are seeing that structure crumbling around them — witness recent layoffs. Don’t their experience, wisdom and institutional memory count for anything?

A longtime employee who is also productive and motivated is of enormous value, said Cathy Benko, chief talent officer at Deloitte. On the other hand, she said, “You can be with a company a long time and not be highly engaged.”

Ms. Benko, who is a boomer herself, has seen her company shift its focus to employees’ level of engagement — or “the level at which people are motivated to deliver their best work” — rather than length of tenure.

Younger workers are likely to hold many more jobs in their lifetime than baby boomers did, Ms. Benko said. More than previous generations, she said, they are asking themselves: Is my work meaningful and challenging, and does it fit in with my life? If the answer is no, they may move on. But the attitude is “I’m leaving, I had a great experience, and I’m taking that with me,” she said.

In certain people, though, loyalty shows up strongly as a personality trait, said Eva Rykr, an organizational psychologist and learning director of EQmentor, a professional development company near Charlotte, N.C.

Some people just have a need to attach themselves to someone or something, she said. But that can be risky when the object of attachment is an abstract company, she warned.

“Perhaps you can consider loyalty to your co-workers and clients as the new loyalty,” she wrote in a Web post last year. This would be “a practical loyalty that is based on our relationships.”

“Looking at the bigger picture,” she added, “you can consider loyalty to your team, your department or a cause.”

But employees may be invoking loyalty when something very different is involved. They may say they are staying in a job for the sake of their company, when, in fact, inertia and fear of change are keeping them there.

Then there are the effects of the recent recession. Many people — if they haven’t been laid off — have stayed in jobs not out of loyalty but because they feel they have no choice. Employers may need to prepare for profound disruptions as their workers head for the exits when the job market improves.

If the pendulum shifts, how will businesses persuade their best employees to stay? Money may do the trick, but not always. Especially with younger people, “you’re not going to buy extra loyalty with extra money,” Ms. Erickson said. Rather, employers need to make jobs more challenging and give workers more creative leeway, she said.

More experienced workers can benefit from opportunities, retraining, recognition and flexibility. Loyalty may not be what it once was, but most companies will still be better off with at least a core of people who stay with them across decades.

In short, if loyalty is seen as a commitment to keep workers of all ages fulfilled, productive and involved, it can continue to be cultivated in the workplace — to the benefit of both employer and employee.

E-mail: thesearch@nytimes.com.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/jobs/24search.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Robot Makers Spread Global Gospel of Automation

The Search: The Shifting Definition of Worker Loyalty

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