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The "real" challenge technology presents isn't that it replaces workers, but rather displaces them.
The robots perform tasks that humans previously performed. The fear is that they are replacing human jobs, eliminating work in distribution centers and elsewhere in the economy. It is not hard to imagine that technology might be a major factor causing persistent unemployment today and threatening “more to come.”
Surprisingly, the managers of distribution centers and supply chains see things rather differently: in surveys they report that they can’t hire enough workers, at least not enough workers who have the necessary skills to deal with new technology. “Supply chain” is the term for the systems used to move products from suppliers to customers. Warehouse robots are not the first technology taking over some of the tasks of supply chain workers, nor are they even seen as the most important technology affecting the industry today.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/scarce-skills-not-scarce-jobs/390789/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:17PM
You have to look at the other side, too, because workers who have the necessary skills are treated as disposable workers who are hired temporarily and then purged. A lot of skilled workers can't have careers any longer. They go from short-term job to short-term job, getting purged by one company and hired by another. Not much incentive there. Of course, I am looking at this from the computer industry perspective. I constantly see short-term jobs (under 1 year) for people with a decade of experience in some obscure vertical market package I've never heard of. Why would anyone bother getting that kind of expertise to get a string of temp jobs? If there's a scarcity, you have to look at the incentives people have to meet the scarcity. At least for a lot of these technology jobs, there's not much incentive. Get 5-10 years experience with some vertical market package, and work for consulting companies that skim money out of your paycheck, move from location to location, and never know where your next job will be. Sounds like a loser deal.
Anyhow, logistics and warehouse management is an area with a lot of obscure vertical market packages. So this has got to be an issue for them.
Hospitals are solving the "shortage" by outsourcing all their IT (and they have a lot of it) to companies like Cerner, but then I know a hospital which did that and a few days later Cerner was looking for someone with vertical market skills in the same area.
Eventually this problem will take care of itself if full-service outsourcers need people badly enough to train them. The problem is everyone wants skilled workers who already have skills, but how do you get them with vertical market packages? You sure can't install a WMS on Linux and learn it. (Even if you could, no one would hire you without experience.) So outsourcers will eventually have to create experts with some kind of apprentice system, because they're going to need them to stay in business.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)