In response to Humanoid Robots to Manufacture Planes, reader “XBE”, a 37-year ex-Boeing employee, pinged me with a few comments on robots and trends in the number of people it takes to build a plane.
“XBE” writes ….
Hello Mish
You are 100% correct about the impact of robots in aircraft manufacturing and elsewhere.
I spent 37 years at Boeing as a design engineer (1967-2004). I have a MSME (master of science in mechanical engineering). This is what I know.
- The new 777X composite wing plant in Everett shocked the IAM (machinists union) as to how few new jobs were needed.
- The same happened at the new Propulsion assembly plant in Charleston. On opening day, IAM was greeted by a huge, giant robot welcoming them.
- In 2015, 79300 Boeing employees delivering 700 airplanes. That’s 113 employees per airplane.
- When I joined Boeing in 1967, Puget Sound had 120,000 employees and Boeing delivered about 300 airplanes (from memory). That’s 400 employees/airplane.
- Since 1967 there has been a 72% reduction in the number of people it takes to build an airplane!
- People I know in the robotic business tell me 60% of today’s jobs will be gone in 20 years. You have covered them: trucking, strawberry/cabbage picking, etc.
Ex-Boeing Employee
Boeing’s Plane Output Climbs Even as Jobs Decline
The Seattle Times reports Boeing’s Plane Output Climbs Even as Jobs Decline.
Local assembly plants are cranking out airplanes, pushing Boeing way past Airbus in jet deliveries. Yet the morale of the local workforce doesn’t match the boom, with employees troubled by continued job losses and by the fear of more to come.
As of Nov. 30, Boeing had 1,424 fewer workers in Washington than it had at the beginning of the year.
Its workforce here is down nearly 7,700 jobs, almost 9 percent, from the most recent peak in October 2012.
Robot Technology
Another Seattle Times article on 777X Production has these snips on robots.
Boeing is installing new robotic technology in its Frederickson plant, where the 777 tail is built, as well as in Everett, where the fuselage and wing are fabricated and the plane assembled.
In Frederickson, robots will reduce manual drilling operations by 80 percent, Lund said.
In Everett, Boeing is building a separate fuselage facility where robots similar to those used in auto manufacturing will stitch together the aluminum panels to make the 777 fuselage.
Elsewhere on the site, behind closed doors, Boeing has already built an 80-foot-long prototype composite wing section to get a head start on perfecting the automated manufacturing process.
Things that people tell me won’t happen, are happening right before our eyes.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Yup, you’re all nascent social crediters.
Oh, please, give it a rest-manufacturing automation has always had this kind of displacement paradigm from time immemorial, and is nothing new.
So tell me when will pilots be 100% replaced by robots again, let alone truckers?
So tell me when will pilots be 100% replaced by robots again, let alone truckers?
Don’t know but the sooner the better
Mish
The fact that autopilot has been around for decades yet pilots are still in the cockpit tells me that the replacement isn’t going to happen in our lifetimes. The airline industry operates on such incredibly thin margins as it is that introducing the concept of no humans in the cockpit won’t go over so well. You really need to read the comp.risks news feed to understand that automation isn’t the panglossian future many make it out to be.
As an old DBA tech once told me: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
Mish I’m an electrical engineer that’s done a lot of coding. I’m not going to fly in a plane without a pilot to back it up any time soon.
It will require the plane to become a near on living being before it is safer than with a pilot. I watch a lot of those “disaster in the air” documentaries. The hardware gets it wrong a lot. See “frozen pitot tubes” for one example.
If people do not have jobs or incomes, who does Boeing think will be riding in all of these planes built by robots??
Who will be riding in those airplanes? Other robots, of course. Rumor has it that they are now forming a union and will demand the same pay and benefits as their human counterparts. LOL
If robots keep replacing workers, who does Boeing think will be riding in those planes??
Cargo (robot parts).
So eventually most work is done by robots. We have the robot maintainers, the bankers providing the capital, and the politicians collecting bribes or taxes all getting paid. Will this be enough paid people to buy the products produced by the robots.?
Then they wonder why the labor participation rate is plummeting. THERE ARE NO JOBS. At the rate we are going there will be nothing left for anyone to do. Can we all be bloggers and amateur porn cam models?
Yes. The future is entertaining each other.
Obviously we’ll have to integrate monetary grace as in Gifting into the economy just as I have said before. It’s either that, complete collapse or some vulgar socialism. And if we integrate Gifting into the economy and money system we’ll be able to reduce taxes all over the place and also actually have the Austrian/Libertarian dream…price deflation….even with a roaring economy. You read it here wisdomicsblog.com …..first.
Question: How many Boeing employees would there be today if Boeing didn’t invest in and develop robotics and related CAD/CAM assembly/design development practices and procedures?
Answer: 0. Boeing would have gone out of business decades ago because their labor costs, quality and productivity would have left them noncompetitive.
Question: How many Boeing employees would there be today if Boeing didn’t invest in and develop robotics and related CAD/CAM assembly/design development practices and procedures?
Answer: 0. Boeing would have gone out of business decades ago because their labor costs, quality and productivity would have left them noncompetitive.
Exactly!
This is 21Cemtety Computers have taken over. They have taken over spelling, your job,an mine. We are just what-nots in this world. Avancment is good you an me, can live off of our retirement. Let electro -electrinic take it’s job. I did solar power rulls. Living the life of a king.
And when there is little need for people to do the work, just how will the people be able to afford to have or use these fine things, since our economy is based on wages to be able to have or use anything now being built by robotics? It isn’t a question that will be answered easily, I think.
I’m not against the surge in technology as it’s long overdue, but there isn’t a clear path for people to follow to for desired goals (material wealth, safety of a home, retirement, whatever it is that drives a person for their ultimate goal). I’m probably not being clear about this, but maybe you can undersand where I’m going here.
Here is an example which comes to mind . If you had studied biology at all you would know of a food pyramid . As the base you have plants , then less herbivores , and at the top you have a lion. This has been the traditional social or productive fabric of mankind , the farmers at the bottom , distributors , and at the top managers . Simplified but you get the drift .
Now imagine robots , say owned by a very privileged top notch , as a point at the bottom , then you have more maintenance staff or robot makers , then distributors , then a mass of consumers as a broad top .
The latter works in the opposite sense to the first . In reality the two are combined, overlapped . You can draw a nice circle around them to keep it as a set . The privileged few owners at the point of production will also be the lions at the top .
The rest is geometrical ‘magic’. All in the set have every interest in keeping the framework functioning until it has transformed itself into a more evolved state.
Theory is one thing, practice entirely another. Also, how do suppose we get there in your ideal without some terrible events along the way? I think you might have missed my point just a little bit.
Here is an example which comes to mind . If you had studied biology at all you would know of a food pyramid . As the base you have plants , then less herbivores , and at the top you have a lion. This has been the traditional social or productive fabric of mankind , the farmers at the bottom , distributors , and at the top managers . Simplified but you get the drift .
Now imagine robots , say owned by a very privileged top notch , as a point at the bottom , then you have more maintenance staff or robot makers , then distributors , then a mass of consumers as a broad top .
The latter works in the opposite sense to the first . In reality the two are combined, overlapped . You can draw a nice circle around them to keep it as a set . The privileged few owners at the point of production will also be the lions at the top .
The rest is geometrical ‘magic’. All in the set have every interest in keeping the framework functioning until it has transformed itself into a more evolved state.
your retirement home will be resplendent with robots.
Robots building planes is soooooo 2016.
Just wait till a 3D printer is spitting out custom aircraft and ships on the same line.
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This advance in technology is obviously good for society overall, but it seems capitalism might not be sustainable this way. Imagine for example 100% of all jobs were taken by robots: only the owners of these robots and those who own lands with natural resources would benefit. Everybody else would be rendered redundant. But of course everyone else still needs money to survive. Hence the owners of resources and robots will be have to share.
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Think about Wang Computer 40 years ago. We went from IBM Selectrics to wangs to pcs. There was talk about eliminating jobs but econ growth hid the loss in those jobs. Now econ growth has shriveled down.
Mcd is going automated. How much more will. Thee bigger questionn is as inferred. What happens in the bigger picture when fewer and fewer people have good paying jobs viz a viz their ability to spend.
We are seeing the answer now. More printing and welfare. The lack of demand isdriving prices lower, not productivity. The industrial revelution might be a map for this or not.
Just who is thinking this out or are we headed toward a hugh brick wall.
What will happen to all the workers who are “made redundant” by the relentless advance of technology? Will society provide for them? If not, will they passively accept their fate, or will social unrest follow? A serious question for “developed” economies.
Of course we’ll have to provide for them (the vast majority of the population that is, which will either not have a job or a job that is not adequate to avoid austerity)…because it will be both the self interested and the ethical thing to do
History shows us, unfortunately, that sooner or later people come into power who do not do the ethical thing. Will this time be different? One can only pray it will.
A system does not have a mind to change….only an inherent condition. If you mandate policies that are gracious and that consequently resolve the inherent condition of the economic system (more costs and so prices as a flow than individual incomes simultaneously produced) people will be free and realize it….and then it will be damned hard for an idiot to change it.
If employees are required to pay an income tax on the value they add to the process (net as income) why don’t robots pay tax for the same contribution?
There’s the rub. Our tax code is based on government wetting its beak on human labor and allowing machine labor to be a tax write down. Exactly the opposite of what is needed in a technological revolution. Unfortunately none of the political candidates understand what is happening around them (massive deflation and devaluation of low skill labor). The first politician who offers a plan to realistically deal with this change gets my vote.
It happened before, in the first part of the 20th century. It needs to happen again. Get rid of the 17th amendment, scrap the IRS (or at least send them in the right direction), and eliminate social security, or at least give back what was paid in without interest.
The Boeing FAUB project has a Youtube video publicly available. This is the automated 777 line.