Automation replacing people

C
Hi Bob

Yes, I pretty much agree. But if I couldn't get comfortable with what they are doing, I still might no-bid. The point is "to thine own self be true". I didn't have any problems with airborne computers or other Mil. electronics, I might with poison gas dispensers or germ warfare stuff. And there are companies I won't do business with as they are clearly morally bankrupt. Strange for a conservative, I suppose, but not very restrictive or disadvantageous in the long run. Someone else _will_ do it and I'll sleep better. There are quite a few common business practices I won't engage in either.

Regards

cww
 
D
Hear, hear. Hopefully it will work as well for us as
it did for Neville Chamberlain....

Davis Gentry
 
B
No offense but if you are unable to make a moral distinction that says that islamic terrorists are evil doers, you really need to look deep into your own soul. there are some moral and ethical absolutes, and neither politics nor religion is an excuse for random acts of vicious attacks on innocent civillians.

I do agree ones own conscience is the best guide, but soem people are just plain lacking a conscience.

Bob Peterson
 
B
Horse hockey! We all have to make moral judgements in our everyday lives, including our professional lifes. It's generally going to be immoral for us to take shortcuts in our designs that will lead to injuries or deaths that are
otherwise avoidable.

Its also a plain fact that there is no case in recorded human history where peace loving people were able to remain peacefull except through the application of force. Human beings are what they are, and turning a blind eye to the evil side of some human beings does not make them go away, or quit comitting their evil acts.

OTOH, you certainly have a right as an individual to ignore evil if it is personally convenient for you to do so. many people are quite happy to leave the dirty work to others to do, while pretending they are doing so out of some great moral decision they made.

I for one choose to act in as moral and ethical a way that I personally can. This is not always the easiest thing to do - I have had it bite me in the backside more than once, but its the way I choose to act.

Bob Peterson
 
C

Chris Jennings

I am only replying to this so that you understand that I am in no way condoning the actions of so called "terrorists". Basically what I was trying to say is that politics have labelled people in a particular way. Western
politics have labelled insurgent groups in Iraq as "terrorists", to some Iraqis these people are "freedom fighters". Just as the Western politics defines the Allies in Iraq as a "liberation army" whereas some in Iraq label
them as "Infidels". This is just one example. One of the most important things that people should do is put yourselves in the other persons shoes. Take it from their perspective, it is the only way that solutions can be
reached (unless total destruction of the other party is achieved).

So please don't get me wrong, I am against any kind of violence against innocent civilians. When people create weapons they will be used by politicians who control armies to do their bidding.

Chris Jennings
 
M

marc sinclair

On May 3, 2004, Bob Peterson wrote:
> Horse hockey! We all have to make moral judgements in our everyday lives, including our professional lifes. <

No! you misunderstand - I am not trying to decide who is right, wrong or evil, these are just opinions (remember today's evil dictator was your friend yesterday, where's the moral absolute in that?) My point is that all of us - yes us, the ones with technical expertise, can choose whether to use our skills to refine and build machines that hurt other people - this is a small world, those other people are my family and my friends.

Yes I know the old argument that to fight is human nature; and that may be so, but let them do it with sticks, not computer controlled intelligent weapons. It is you and I and our community who supply these weapons to _ALL_ sides, it is our community who can eventually limit the options of those who decide th fight.

> Its also a plain fact that there is no case in recorded human history
> where peace loving people were able to remain peaceful except through
> the application of force. <

I choose to keep looking, to find a way. In the meantime I'll work on making food safer and keep fresh longer.

Marc Sinclair
 
M

marc sinclair

Precisely! while he was negotiating, Britain was re-arming. My point is simple, If, as a community, we limit the technology available for weapons, then the options for the nation states, or other groups, to start war is limited. (Incidentally this is not in the interest of national governments, who rule by keeping us apart.)

My _much_ bigger point is that the Internet, and the communication it allows, means that our communities transcend national boundaries and therefore the 'us' and 'them' no longer exist. There is no longer, our moral boffins working to outsmart their evil boffins, with the
accompanying collateral damage. Boffins of the world unite!
--
Marc Sinclair
http://www.germainesystems.co.uk
 
Hi All

Many "Islamic terrorists" feel that the lackadaisical morals and undisciplined attention to religious duties exhibited by western society, is a threat to the very fibre of their own society. They may see western moral
standards as being a threat to their family and social order and they may consider that this threat to their way of life is worth defending themselves against, therefore they take up arms against what they perceive to be evil.
It is the inability to see the other side of the coin that causes us to paint them as terrorists, they believe western society is a real cause for concern and this justifies the actions, consequently they are not terrorists but defenders of Islam. I do not necessarily agree with this, but this is the way my brain has containerized it.

"Containerizing" it is of course the easy part, what to do about living together in peace is the difficult part, being South African and seeing the change in my own country over the last 15 years, I have come to believe there are solutions to these problems that don't necessary entail mayhem, murder and anarchy.

Regards
Donald P
 
On May 2, 2004, Marc Sinclair wrote:
> > If you want peace then don't prepare for war. <

On May 3, 2004, Davis Gentry wrote:
> Hear, hear. Hopefully it will work as well for us as
> it did for Neville Chamberlain.... <

Nice, but people who have heard of Chamberlain probably agree already, and it won't make any sense to those who haven't. How many remember these days that Chamberlain's "peace in our time" refers to World War II?

Hmm, getting rather off-topic here...

Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jirib
MAT LinuxPLC project --- http://mat.sf.net --- Machine Automation Tools

[Editor's Note: As Jiri mentioned in his reply, the posts on this thread are getting off-topic for this forum. Please restrict your future comments on this thread to aspects of the subject that relate directly to industrial automation and control. Thanks.

Pam Williams
Editor & Moderator ]
 
How can any knowledgable person ask a question like this? If you are making weapons, most are built for terrorists, either governmental or non-governmental, domestic or foreign.
 
I programmed PLCs for well over 30 years and the only time I was un-employed was in a very bad "slump" for the entire economy... I found it very easy to stay working... And that's the secret! Be willing to WORK!!

I've heard so much whining about being out of work or working yourself out of a job that I feel like up-chucking!!

Instead of complaining, try working...
 
Kudos: the love of peace and peacefulness is a laudable quality. Automation professionals have a certain responsibility in this direction.
 
J

Jason Covington

Automation enables plants and people to be more efficient. This is the job of American workers and American free-market industry: to be innovators and develop new ways of doing things that allow us to stay competitive.

As individuals, we have to continue to do this in our own professional development as well. Therefore, if you once worked on an assembly line, you must stay in touch with the development of new technology and develop the skill sets that allow you to continue to contribute to increased production and improved proficiency long-term. This is not the job of the plant itself. Industry's role in the market is not to ensure that American workers have the same jobs forever. Industry should have any hard feelings when a plant improves its overall efficiency and an outdated process is improved, displacing manual workers. However, the manual workers who were there during the whole process should feel bad if they did not do anything in their own lives to continue their professional development growth and to gain new skills and stay abreast of new technology so they would be able to continue to contribute.

At MYNAH Technologies, we would be in trouble if our process simulation software and products did not result in greater plant efficiency and reduce the number of man hours spent on a project. This is how we measure ROI: quicker time to market, improved efficiency, better production, improved batch, reduced number of incidents and shut-downs, etc.

We are in the business of reducing the number of engineers required to do a simulation project as well. With MiMiC v3, if you can use Windows, you can create a simulation of your plant. It is that easy to use. It is designed for use by end users and integrators. Although this takes some engineers off a project, it improves overall ROI, efficiency, profit, production, and our ability to compete in the global marketplace.

Isn't that our goal?

Jason Covington
MYNAH Technologies
http://www.mimicsimulation.com
http://www.mynah.com/forum/
 
Cost reduction is the word of this decade that everybody is talking about. Too many professionals became very well overpaid especially when jobs were transferred to China and Mexico and other global spots. I have hared many Americans saying this is the American way of doing business, and I agree that cost needs to be reduced by any mean. For example there are many redundant engineering jobs, too many managers getting big bulk of dollars for a job a babysitter can do, CEO and president positions with too fat salaries for a jobs the hotel receptionist can do, so called inventors and SS Black Belts paid for jobs they claimed but didn’t do, technical report writers who are not more than an ancient history writers, leaders who spend 99% of work time playing computer games and talking non sense and wondering around, and the list is so huge as I observe and feel the Niagara Falls of Millions of dollars lost for filing time report and the weekly and monthly reports and poor managemen
t and leader skills.

Why do we want to reduce cost? For these fat salaries individuals mentioned above to have more money in their pockets for the job they didn’t do and to cut the jobs of those who bring cash to the register.

Why not being realistic? Why not having these fat salaries individuals to come down and do the real job? Why don’t we invent a computerized circuit that can do what they are doing with many times fold of better performance at almost no cost? As an engineer I came up with many different circuit – system – ASIC and AI application ideas I can present to the Share Holders of the company to replace these fat salaried people with buttons that can do real job at almost 1/100th of the cost the company pays to them – the fat salaried CEOs, Presidents, Chiefs, Officers, Marketing, Administrators, Planners, Sales people, and many others who are very well overpaid. Being overpaid is damaging to the Share Holders and real workers and money must be saved the American Way. With the advent of today’s technology our innovative Artificial Intelligence Application Programming combined with the complex semiconductors will yield to several thousands percent more efficient work environment where o
nly few will do the job of thousands. Tremendous cost reduction will be accomplished when utilizing buttons instead of CEOs, leaders, and big managers. Besides eliminating this layer of the roof in the command chain will improve on all aspects especially on time resulting in multiplied profits.

AI will be used to make decisions very fast, do the real work, take care of sales and marketing, assist in management, do inventory, automate, organize, analyze, optimize, translate languages, listen to your verbal commands in obedience, and yes read your mind…

Time and money are the nerve of this country. The only way to keep it strong is by making more time and money available to the holders. All redundancies must be eliminated; all additional expenses must be reduced, and must be worked out in the open with the consensuses of the rest of public, as making isolated - secret decisions will constitute fraud.

F. Faham
June 16, 2008
 
R
I understand your problem. I guess most of us here have had similar experiences. However, I have tried to change the way our sales pitch push ROI (Return on Investment. Instead of pointing out less labor will be required, we now tell them that with the product waste, they'll save, they can out in a new line (with operators) within a year or two. So far, we haven't seen a massive layoff (yet). I design precision checkweighers, and the approach would seem to encourage management to a "wait-and-see" attitude. We basically try to save the customer thousands of $$/month. Knock on wood...
 
As a former employee of a semi-conductor company, I once automated an RO system that had been run manually for years. But as production was moved overseas and FABs were shutting down, the high cost of operating the RO/DI plant were being born by a shrinking "customer base", so costs had to be reduced. It was time to reduce head count.

The operator on the back shift's sole job at this point was to start and stop the RO's to maintain level in a wet well to prevent overflow or a low level. But he didn't even do that very well, as it was common for the wet well to overflow into the parking lot because he was too busy talking on the phone or napping to pay attention to the level.

I knew him personally and also knew that by automating the RO's he would be laid off. But I also knew I would be doing him and the company a favor. When he angrily approached me about his upcoming layoff, I said "Bob, your whole job has been reduced to maintaining a level in a tank, and that job can easily be done by a PLC. You haven't got a real job and you're way to smart to be wasting your talents (he did have an associates degree after all) waiting for a tank to overflow. It's time you got a real job because you're just wasting your time here."

He didn't want to hear that and he retaliated by stealing my company jacket, but he did get a real job where he is making more money, has more responsibility, and most importantly, is using his talents productively. I have no regrets.
 
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