by Fronetics | Oct 10, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Robotics & Automation, Supply Chain
Supply chain companies are beginning to use robotics to boost warehouse efficiency and drive profits thanks to new automated technologies.
Highlights:
- High-res cameras, pressure sensors, navigation lasers, and acoustic warning indicators allow automated devices to navigate warehouses efficiently and autonomously.
- Robotics offers enhanced efficiency for both warehouse capability and predictive supply chain management.
- After major investments in automated fulfillment centers, Amazon has seen a 50% increase in capacity when compared to facilities that don’t use robotics.
A recent Information Services Group (ISG) study suggests that something big is happening: 72% of information services (IS) enterprises plan to increase their investment in robotics by the end of the 2019. Why? Because automation and IS are a natural fit.
Leading companies worldwide are beginning to use robotics to boost their warehouse efficiency and forecasting capabilities. And an improving price-to-performance ratio associated with robotics technology means that usage is sure to continue expanding.
The advantages of automation
New automated technologies are a game-changer. Until recently, available robotic devices were stationary and couldn’t interact visually with their surroundings or respond to unexpected inputs. Today, robots are mobile and collaborative. High-res cameras, pressure sensors, navigation lasers, and acoustic warning indicators allow automated devices to navigate warehouses efficiently and autonomously.
Recent technology upgrades include software that causes a robot to cease activity temporarily if it encounters an unexpected object or input, meaning that these devices can safely work alongside humans. Whereas earlier robots were used mainly to transfer objects from one place to another, more recent technology can enhance tasks ranging from managing inventory to retrieving, assembling, and packing orders.
Industry leaders have invested in automated warehouse management systems (WMS) with undeniable results. After major investments in automated fulfillment centers, Amazon has seen a 50% increase in capacity when compared to facilities that don’t use robotics. Amazon has even acquired the company that creates its robots, indicating Amazon’s confidence that the continued production and development of automated technology will play a big part in their future.
JD.com, China’s largest online retailer, has gone even further. Boasting the world’s first fully automated e-commerce warehouse, JD has equipped the 43,000-square-foot facility with 20 industrial robots that allow the company to provide same- and next-day delivery to more than 1 billion customers. Whereas a standard warehouse of that size would require nearly 500 workers, JD employs just 5.
Streamlining operational staff offers a big pay-off. On average, a warehouse employee wastes almost 7 weeks per year in unnecessary motion, which adds up overall to $4.3 billion in labor expenses. For employees, simply walking around in the warehouse accounts for 50% of the time involved in retrieving orders and checking inventories. Coupled with the potential for human error, the superior efficiency of robots makes it a question of “when?” rather than “if?” automation will become the new norm in parcel-sorting hubs and distribution centers.
Automated guided vehicles
The robotics revolution is already underway. One of the most widespread and effective uses of robots in warehouses is the automated guided vehicle (AGV). These self-driving vehicles are rendering expensive and single-use equipment like conveyor belts and large loading vehicles obsolete. Battery-monitoring systems send AGVs back to their charging ports when necessary, maximizing the efficiency of their operation. AGVs can be directed by voice or programmed to retrieve orders, guided by physical markers, magnets, and vision systems. In addition to navigating a warehouse floor more quickly and efficiently than human employees, AGVs are also capable of lifting and transporting much heavier weights, allowing for a larger number of orders to be retrieved in the same amount of time.
The advantages of AGVs run deeper than warehouse efficiency, however, and extend to logistics operations as well. AGVs track and update inventory records in real time as they retrieve orders. Ordinarily, the immense amount of data involved in running supply chains creates inefficiency and requires additional personnel to monitor inventory levels and place orders. The AGV integrates these tasks into a streamlined operation, as it can retrieve items as soon as order data is received and updates inventory levels instantaneously, even placing automatic purchases. This allows for improved forecasting and faster inventory refill.
Effi-BOT & Sawyer
That’s all very well in theory. But how does it work in practice?
DHL has led the pack in using robots to assist employees with repetitive and physically demanding tasks. Effi-BOT, an AGV that follows employees through DHL warehouses, takes over the physical work involved in picking orders. The use of Effi-BOT has allowed DHL to move from single-order picking to a multi-order model, and helps track complex inventory dynamics.
Another robot, Sawyer, has illustrated how automation can be used in flexible ways to accommodate ever-changing purchasing and order patterns involved in e-commerce. Sawyer’s collaborative capabilities allow it to handle repetitive aspects of the co-packing process. By adding Sawyer to its existing workforce, DHL has been able to use the robot to flexibly adjust to unpredictable order data.
Managing robotics
Typically, the inventory and performance data generated by devices such as Sawyer and Effi-BOT is aggregated in a dashboard that supply chain managers can use to check inventory levels and review automated requests sent from robotic devices to purchasing departments. By integrating data recorded in real time by automated devices, dashboards make larger and larger segments of the supply chain visible, allowing managers to pinpoint the source of problems, such as a delayed order from a supplier’s factory.
Robotics thus offers enhanced efficiency for both warehouse capability and predictive supply chain management. While the regulatory policies surrounding the use of robotics in the workplace are as yet uncertain, there can be no doubt that automation is already re-shaping the supply chain. Successful companies of the future will be the ones that find ways of taking advantage of new robotics technology today.
This post originally appeared on EBN Online.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Jun 12, 2019 | Blog, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media
Automation can make your social media marketing more efficient and effective, allowing you more time to develop and execute other marketing campaigns. Here are 11 social media marketing mistakes to avoid.
Social media automation is quite a controversial marketing topic. The critics cry, “Social media is supposed to be social!” The supporters retort, “It’s all about efficiency!” Surely, there’s a middle ground, right? Just look at those adorable little robot eyes. Automation can’t be all bad, right?
We certainly agree. Social media automation can be done right. Just avoid the following 11 awful social media automation mistakes, and you’ll be good to go.
11 Awful Social Media Automation Mistakes Marketers Should Stop Making
1. You’re Scared of It.
Are you one of those social media automation critics we mentioned in the intro? Stop being such a fraidy cat … you’re missing out! When done right, automation can make your social media marketing more efficient and effective, allowing you more time to develop and execute other marketing campaigns and promotions. We’ve even developed a simple, customizable social media scheduling template and blog post guide to help you organize and plan your social media updates for the most popular social networks. Just avoid the rest of the mistakes on this list, and you’re golden. Guilty social automation conscience begone!
2. You’re Using Way Too Much of It.
Remember: too much of anything is usually bad, and the overuse of social media automation is usually what makes the automation critics cringe the most. First, you need to find the right balance of updates for each of the social networks you’re participating in. This involves testing and optimization to determine your ideal publishing frequency, and it usually involves pushing the limit a little bit. Try increasing the number of updates you currently publish and gauge your fans’/followers’ reactions. You might be surprised that you can update more than you thought and that you get a nice little lead bumps as a bonus!
Remember, the half-life ( the time it takes a link to receive half the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak) of a link shared on Twitter is only 2.8 hours, which means it’s acceptable to publish fairly frequently. On Facebook, updates last a little bit longer, so you don’t need to publish quite as much. Our social media publishing template recommends starting with 8 tweets a day, 4 Facebook updates, and 3 LinkedIn updates. Which leads us to our next mistake …
3. You Leave No Room for Ad Hoc Updates.
Don’t automate so much content in social media that you’re really pushing it if something last minute pops up that you really want to post an update about on your social networks. Things come up. You’re behind on your leads goal and you just created an awesome new ebook that you want to promote via social? You shouldn’t feel guilty about popping in a tweet or two about it in addition to your scheduled, automated updates. Or maybe you did some awesome newsjacking and you want your fans and followers to know about it right away. Don’t overdo it with the scheduled updates that you have to sacrifice those last-minute opportunities that arise.
4. You’re Setting it and Forgetting It.
Schedule and automate your social media updates and there’s no reason to check your social media accounts until the next batch of updates needs to be uploaded to HootSuite, right? WRONG. Do this, and you should be subjected to the wrath of social media automation critics. Just because you’re automating some updates, doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for monitoring the conversation — and participating in it. You still need to monitor the discussion happening around your content, answering your fans’ and followers’ questions, and, that’s right … engaging. In real time, or close to it. And with all the social media monitoring tools available to make it easier to do, there’s no excuse not to.
5. You’re Hiring an Agency to Manage It and Not Properly Setting Expectations.
Let’s relive the story of a former HubSpot employee who fell victim to some very unfortunate, poorly executed social media automation. What happened was, AT&T hired a marketing agency to execute its Ticket Chasers Twitter campaign for March Madness. The intent of the campaign was to target people who would be interested in the content of the program with personalized tweets: bloggers (who would get the word out about Ticket Chasers), people who live in the cities in which the Ticket Chasers promotion is occurring, and people who mention basketball or March Madness. Except what ended up happening was the agency targeting people that fit these criteria even if they weren’t followers of AT&T — and a very spammy Twitter presence.
The lesson is this: If you’re going to outsource any type of automation, make sure you set some very clear and specific expectations with your agency up front — both for what constitutes proper targeting and automation, and how frequently the campaign should be monitored so there could be a quick response if something goes awry.
6. Your Scheduled Updates Even SOUND Robotic.
Just because you’re scheduling automated updates doesn’t mean it has to sound like a robot wrote the copy. Spend some time carefully crafting your social media updates, and for goodness’ sake, infuse some personality into them! It should sound like a human took the time to craft the update because a human did take the time to create them, right?
7. Your Content Is Stale or Unremarkable.
Nothing indicates a low-quality social media presence like unremarkable content. Whether you’re manually updating your social networks or using automation to make your social media marketing more efficient, it’s all about the content of your updates. Share awesome content that your audience cares about, and they won’t mind that you may have scheduled it in advance. If you’re using HubSpot’s free social media scheduling template, keep your content repository tab stocked with a mix of awesome evergreen content that never gets stale and can be re-promoted over time, as well as new content and offers you create over time.
8. Your Timing Is Way Off.
Just scheduling updates all willy nilly without strategizing about timing? Think about it. Should that online coupon you’re sharing really get tweeted on the 12th when it expires on the 11th? Probably not. Be careful — nothing smells like stinky automation more than careless planning and timing. Should that offer, which just so happens to be targeted at your international prospects in Mumbai, be posted to your Facebook business page at 5 PM ET? Remember, it’s 2:30 AM in Mumbai. Be sure you’re scheduling your updates for times that make sense for your audience, and don’t be afraid to do some testing and experimentation to determine exactly what that optimal timing is.
9. You Treat Scheduled Updates the Same Way on All Social Networks.
Not all social networks are the same, so don’t treat your updates like they’re one-size-fits-all. Each has its own guidelines, tone, and different types of users, so make sure you tailor your updates to appeal to each social network’s nuances. For example, your Twitter updates need to fit within 280 characters, but snippets that accompany links you share on LinkedIn and Facebook can be much longer. And LinkedIn caters to a much more professional audience than, say, Facebook. And remember, you can reuse a lot of the same content across social networks; it’s how you frame and position that content that should be tweaked.
10. You’re Not Measuring Results and Adjusting Accordingly.
Trying to pick your best content for your automated updates? Attempting to determine the optimal timing and frequency of your updates for each social network? You’re probably going to need to rely on your analytics for all those things, don’t you think? Make use of your marketing analytics to identify the content and offers that tend to perform well in social media so you can promote more of the types of content that work, and nix the types that don’t. Track your leads and referral traffic from social media, coupled with qualitative data on how your fans/followers react to timing and frequency, so you can optimize those techniques as well.
11. You’re Not Adding Sharing Links to Your Content.
That’s right — think of it as social media automation enablement. Adding social media sharing links/buttons to all your content, whether it’s a web/landing page, blog post, within an ebook, in an email, makes it easy for your audience to spread your content for you, and expand your reach. It’s sort of like automating evangelism! It might sound sneaky, but your audience will probably appreciate that you’ve done some of the work involved in sharing content for them. People are always looking for social sharing fodder, and if your content is awesome, it’ll make them look like a valuable social media connection who shares great stuff!
Are you making effective use of social media automation? What else would you add to this list of social automation mistakes?
This article was written by Pamela Vaughan. Pamela is a Principal Marketing Manager, Website CRO & Copywriting at HubSpot. She is best known for introducing the concept of historical optimization, which increased organic search traffic and leads for HubSpot’s blog by more than 200%.
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by Fronetics | May 2, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
As automation technologies become increasingly sophisticated, companies throughout the supply chain are realizing the beneficial impact of automation on materials handling.
Highlights:
- Manufacturers of automation technologies are predicted to grow significantly over the next 5 years.
- Automating the “first mile” of the supply chain helps reduce labor challenges and leads to increased productivity.
- Robotics technologies offer greater capacity for data collection, facilitating informed process decisions.
While the impact of automation on the “last mile” of the supply chain is often the subject of public interest, automation in the “first mile” deserves just as much attention. Advanced robotics are increasingly ensuring accuracy — while minimizing or even eliminating human involvement in various processes — at every stage of the supply chain. Industry experts are predicting an ever-growing impact of automation on materials handling, with companies reaping the benefits up and down the supply chain.
Particularly in the materials-handling sector, human capital is increasingly difficult to recruit and maintain. Additionally, labor costs in global markets such as India and China are rising. Naturally, companies are increasingly inclined to replace or redeploy human labor, with the help of automated material-handling systems.
Not to mention, the increasing sophistication of machine-learning capabilities or AI within available automation technologies allows for even greater productivity. And there’s strong reason to believe that we’re only seeing the beginning of what automation can do. Vendors who create these technologies are investing heavily in R&D, aggressively attempting to expand their product offerings to meet specific industry demands while complying with the complex standards and regulations in place.
Quantifying the costs and impact of automation on materials handling
The robust growth in the robotics-equipment-manufacturing sector demonstrates that the materials-handling industry is investing in automation. Thanks to the demand for high-performance robotics systems, New Equipment Digest (NED) predicts that within the materials-handling-equipment sector, the robotics segment will grow by over 8%, reaching $20 billion by the year 2024. The overall material-handling-equipment market is expected to surpass $190 billion by the same year, according to a growth forecast report by Global Market Insights, Inc.
“Growing automation capabilities in the manufacturing space coupled with increasing penetration of advanced technologies, such as IoT, RFID, and AI, are expected to drive the material-handling-equipment market growth,” predicts the NED. These technologies are already increasing productivity and throughput in the materials-handling sector and reducing the potential for human error. The predicted growth in the manufacturing of robotics equipment points to the increasingly positive impact of automation supply chain-wide.
Of course, automation is not without its challenges. Companies face technical issues involved in implementation, not to mention the large capital outlay required to invest in costly equipment and technologies. With increased technical sophistication and network utilization, there are threats to cybersecurity, requiring companies to invest in measures to protect their technology.
Robotics-equipment manufacturers recognize that while automation offers significant benefits for materials handling, companies need to study potential impact before making these costly investments.
Many manufacturers are offering tools for quantifying the impact of automation on materials handling. OTTO Motors, a manufacturer of self-driving-vehicles, offers an ROI calculator, allowing potential buyers the opportunity to receive an easy ROI estimate. Manufacturers are also increasingly offering simulations of materials-handling systems, allowing potential customers to determine efficacy, test designs, and study new procedures without disrupting operations.
Realizing the benefits of automation for materials handling
Beyond the well-known benefits, such as decreased costs and increased productivity, automating materials-handling processes can offer a variety of additional advantages to companies’ first-mile operations. In fact, streamlining these processes and reducing costs has its own positive repercussions throughout a company’s operations, as it allows for increased speed, productivity, and accuracy operation-wide.
[bctt tweet=”Automating materials-handling processes has its own positive repercussions throughout a company’s operations, as it allows for increased speed, productivity, and accuracy operation-wide.” username=”Fronetics”]
Additional benefits of automating materials handling include:
- The access to real-time data provided by automated technologies allows for more complete Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
- Labor shortages and high turnover are some of the primary challenges in materials handling – automation shields manufacturers from these challenges, while allowing human labor to be repurposed into more intricate tasks.
- Implementing technology in the materials-handling phase of the supply chain can connect to other automated processes within the factory.
- The availability of data and the ability to leverage it allows adjustments to be made in real time, meaning more flexible manufacturing.
The bottom line is that, while it can be costly at the outset, automation at the front end of the supply chain, namely materials handling, offers rich and diverse benefits sector-wide.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Jul 30, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Supply Chain, Talent
A new article discusses the way that automation, AI and big data are transforming the industry. It raises the alarm that supply chain management will soon cease to exist, only to assert that it will still exist, just in a very different form.
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
A new article in Harvard Business Review has been generating some automation-related controversy in the Supply Chain Community, as well as lots of buzz and interesting conversation. Naturally, we at Argentus want to weigh in. Titled, “The Death of Supply Chain Management,” the article discusses the way that automation, AI and big data are transforming the industry. It raises the alarm that the function will soon cease to exist, only to – as these “X is dead“ articles often end up doing – assert that it will still exist, just in a very different form.
Beyond the obviously clickbait headline – which we couldn’t help but indulge in ourselves – the article makes some fascinating predictions about the future of supply chains. But even more relevant to us at Argentus, it has some interesting forecasts about the future of supply chain talent in particular, in the coming world where automation is king.
Automation is one of the hotter topics in the supply chain community – as it is across the entire economy. As a major feature in McKinsey discusses, automation has already made a number of jobs in the field way less relevant, threatening to eliminate those jobs entirely. Many companies have already automated their front-line transactional purchasing activities. Automation has eliminated a number of blue-collar supply chain jobs in warehouses and distribution centres, and driverless trucks stand to transform the logistics field, eliminating the need for millions of truck drivers.
But many are alarmed that automation will replace white-collar workers as well. The HBR article talks about how more companies are automating functions like demand forecasting, which has long been seen as more of an “art” than an exact science. No longer.
In the authors’ words, “within 5-10 years, the supply chain function may be obsolete, replaced by a smoothly running, self-regulating utility that optimally manages end-to-end workflows and requires very little human intervention.”
[bctt tweet=”Automation through digital technology isn’t really just about lowering labour costs, it’s about creating huge opportunities for companies to dive deep into data and create end-to-end visibility into their own supply chains.” username=”Fronetics”]
Automation through digital technology isn’t really just about lowering labour costs, it’s about creating huge opportunities for companies to dive deep into data and create end-to-end visibility into their own supply chains. This kind of visibility opens up huge opportunities, not only by lowering risk but also by letting companies become more strategic.
The HBR article outlines an interesting development: more retail and manufacturing companies are adopting “digital control towers” for their supply chains. These companies have physical rooms staffed with dozens of data analysts working in real-time to identify and squash challenges.
Picture an airport control tower, but for supply chain management: staffed 24/7, full of large screens full of 3d graphical representations of potential bottlenecks and inventory shortfalls all the way from order to delivery. These control towers are full of systems that can automatically correct for various issues, and they’re increasingly considered to be core aspects of company operations.
The authors outline how mining company Rio Tinto is using robotic train operators, cameras, lasers, and tracking sensors to monitor and fully automate its supply chain from train to port.
But do these developments hearld the end of the need for skilled Supply Chain professionals? Of course not.
A highly-automated “digital control tower” needs responsive individuals with deep understanding of how to solve Supply Chain challenges. An automated mining supply chain deep in the jungle, monitored in another country still needs people to monitor it and respond to issues.
Maybe unsurprisingly, the HBR article ends up saying that Supply Chain people will always be in demand, but that skill needs are changing, and we agree. People need to re-skill, up-skill, and educational institutions need to make sure that they’re training people with skills for the future and not the past. In the short term, executives who can manage people doing repetitive tasks (like transactional purchasing) need to learn how to manage information flows for more highly-specialized workers. Further down the ladder, the highest-demand analysts will be those who can draw insights from an ever-expanding pool of data and communicate them to senior leadership. Companies will need specialists with deep understanding of both technology and operations to design and implement automated supply chains – even more than they already do.
But beyond the trends that the HBR article outlines, we think they’re missing a key element: even if automation progresses to affect white-collar workers, even if data automates functions like supply planning, logistics, and sourcing, the human element will always matter. Companies will always need people who can build relationships with vendors when conducting large-scale Procurement. They’ll always need people who can negotiate contracts and rates, people who have the emotional intelligence to understand the psychology of the person sitting on the other end of the table, and arrive at a deal that drives value.
Machines will get better at the tactics, but the strategy will always be human, at least until the robots take over the world completely. (Which we don’t think will happen, by the way).
In the 19th century, luddites protested the adoption of machines in the British textile industry, fearing that they’d be out of a job. And they were. But while opportunities for weaving by hand disappeared, employment didn’t: the industrial revolution pushed new skillsets to the fore, creating a demand for people to manage production – leading to today’s supply chain function, by the way – while raising overall wealth and standard of living in the process.
While the rise of AI, big data and workplace automation has some important differences, we think it’s a worthwhile analogy: as with then, these new technologies will shift the employment landscape and put the squeeze on individuals with transactional or blue-collar skillsets. But supply chain professionals who can up-skill themselves, and become masters of the interpersonal skills that will never go away, will have more opportunities than ever before.
Take it from a company that’s on the front-lines of hiring in Supply Chain: while automation eliminates jobs at the lower-skilled end of the spectrum, demand for high-skilled candidates is higher than ever before, and only rising. So is Supply Chain Management on death’s door?
Not so fast.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Jul 24, 2018 | Blog, Current Events, Data/Analytics, Internet of Things, Logistics, Manufacturing & Distribution, Supply Chain
Automation in manufacturing can help create more, better paying jobs. But two leading economists have examined real-world data and concluded that the robots may be winning after all. Is it true?
Last year I wrote about artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential loss of American jobs. At the time, I thought; “Yes, people will lose jobs — that is inevitable. Automation, however, will create many more.”
Automation would create leaner, more efficient operations. Efficiency facilitates new market opportunities and business growth, which in turn would allow for expansion and job creation.
It felt like a good argument! And I wasn’t alone. If one looks at media coverage from last year, one can find plenty of references to “beating the robots.”
There was a palpable feeling, an energizing hope, that automation would, in fact, ultimately create more, better paying jobs. And these new jobs wouldn’t be the low-skill positions of their pre-automation predecessors, but rather higher-paying opportunities operating new technology and supervising automated processes.
In a paper last year, two of the most respected researchers on the subject said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels.
It all seemed positive.
This year’s news
But wait. The same researchers — Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University — published an updated study that has gained a tremendous amount of attention. It was covered in-depth by the New York Times, with the title: Evidence That Robots are Winning the Race for American Jobs.
Sadly, their study appeared to be the first “to quantify large, direct, negative effects of robots.”
In referencing the difference in prognosis from last year to this year, the NYT article noted that the older paper was “a conceptual exercise” and the new study “uses real-world data — and suggests a more pessimistic future.”
I thought, I’m going to have to write a new article. It was tentatively titled, “I Take It Back: The Data Says the Robots May Be Winning.”
But as I sat down to write, something just didn’t add up. How did all this jive with the latest employment news? Only days ago, unemployment rates hit 3.9%, a rare low, mimicking rates we haven’t seen since 2000.
Taking in the whole picture
As I looked further into the study, I found that it covered 1990-2007, a lengthy but rather unique time in our economic history. The years from 1990 to 2007 saw a dotcom boom and burst. (Just for reference, unemployment rates rose sharply in 2009 and 2010, but have been on a steady decline since then.)
The robot vs. man study said that robots were to blame for up to 670,000 lost manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007. I’m not arguing with the study.
But they then go on to conclude the following: The numbers will rise because industrial robots are expected to quadruple. And from where I sit in 2018, I simply don’t see the facts to support that assumption.
Let’s look at manufacturing specifically. Are machines and automation blowing up the manufacturing sector? Well, yes and no.
Certainly manufacturing jobs have had a sharp decline over the last 20 years; that’s undeniable.
But since 2000, their percentage of the overall job market has held generally stable between 8 and 9%. And current employment statistics for 2018 show increases in the manufacturing sector.
Now, I’m not suggesting manufacturing jobs are “roaring back” by any stretch. But a positive trend line is … well … positive. The prognosis of a “pessimistic future” just doesn’t seem widely supported yet by the facts. Time, as always, will tell.
Of course, economists warn that employment rates aren’t the whole picture. While they may mimic that of 2000, they warn that the economy isn’t the same and that it is concerning that wages have been slow to rise even though unemployment has fallen.
From what I see now, however, I still feel optimistic that AI and automation will create leaner, more efficient operations that will, in turn, create new (even if different) jobs. To me, it still looks like the ones winning from the increasing technological advances in the manufacturing industry are, in fact, we humans.
This post originally appeared on EBN Online.
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