Mercedes hired humans to replace robots on the production line of its plant in Sindelfingen, Germany. When it comes to assembling highly-customized autos, robotic workers can't yet match the dexterity and decision-making abilities of real people.
Chalk up a win for humanity. In spite of futurists’ predictions that automation will slowly replace most people’s jobs, there are still plenty of jobs at which robots are no match for humans. And one of those jobs, as it turns out, is assembling customized Mercedes S-Class sedans.
It’s not that robots aren’t hard workers, or that they aren’t reliable on the assembly line. Robots are particularly good at performing predefined tasks over and over again, and have been widely used in the auto industry since the 1940s, when Ford introduced autonomous machines onto its assembly line.
But robots aren’t good at customizing parts and making decisions on the assembly line, which is why Mercedes decided to hire more skilled human workers to staff its plant in Sindelfingen, Germany.
[Also Covered By]:
- Bloomberg - Mercedes Boots Robots From the Production Line
- Engadget - Mercedes replaces robots with people on its assembly line
- The Guardian - Mercedes-Benz swaps robots for people on its assembly lines
- The Register - Humans – 1 Robots – 0: Mercedes deautomates production lines
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday February 28 2016, @04:19AM
In the US, where all manufacturing is frowned upon in favor of middle-man jobs at banks and investment firms which create no actual wealth, just move it around, the notion of hiring people for good pay to do work that produces actual wealth (i.e., shit people want to buy) is unthinkable when all those jobs can be outsourced to a third-world sweatshop.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:11AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @04:47AM
Sounds like there are too many S-class options to be easily programmed (there may even be full custom options on the order form). Or maybe Merc doesn't have enough programmers to teach all the needed robots? If you are only doing something once or a few times, then it's cheaper to have a person do it directly than to teach the programmer how to do it, so it can be programmed.
(Score: 2) by goodie on Sunday February 28 2016, @05:05AM
Perhaps. But the workers might also be required so that the patterns that can be programmed into a robot are learned and become routinized first. If there are so many options available, then workers may be dealing with relatively complex issues that a robot would not know of unless all those rules were programmed into it. Until those rules are known and the implicit knowledge these workers have can become explicit and therefore programmed, robots might suck at it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 28 2016, @05:28AM
Or, maybe when you charge $100K+ for a car, you can afford to pay someone with skill to assemble with pride and take the time necessary to do a good reliable job.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @06:53PM
Or it's because you can say "handcrafted luxury" or better bullshit[1] and charge the target market even more?
[1] I'm not good at writing such stuff- you should see the stuff written on some whisky bottles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @07:34AM
theyre easily programmed. theyre difficult to implement as each particular part option atcany given step could require actions that are too disparate for a given robot to install. so it is more economical to use a human at that process step to install the one-of-one hundred customizations. it is really indicative of the S Series having too many options. Which I thought car industry was trying to NOT do, even at the high end of things... (the Toyota & Honda models-at each tier provide evough options to reduce bespoke configurations, vs US cars in 70s/80s...)...
But we're talking S series... M-B competing with Rolls Royce, Bentley, (not Caddilac) at this level...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday February 28 2016, @08:50PM
If I might provide some non-professional insight...
Automating manufacturing is actually fairly difficult. You need to design a manufacturing process that can reliably manufacture a product within tolerable error margins in a potentially uncontrolled environment (heat, vibration, dust, etc.) that is furthermore only cost effective at large economies of scale.
Thus, for the current job of manufacturing customized cars, 1) a lot of customization options means that you have to design 2^(customizable options) manufacturing paths: four options means you need to design and test 16 different manufacturing lines for one product, roughly speaking. 2) I'm assuming these customized cars have less demand than stock cars, so now you're also asking for orders of magnitude less economies of scale for exponentially more cost.
It is of course possible to have the technology and design to do this cost effectively at some point in time, but for Mercedes, apparently, that time is not now.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 28 2016, @05:13AM
When I was corporate, sales people would try to woo me with "we will sell no wine before its time", and "excellence of luxury" when it came to stuff for ME.
But if it involved stuff we were making for our customer, it was "minimal cost" all the way down - with savings that went all the way to the bottom line.
I wonder how much of the highly paid decision makers are opting for luxury S-Class sedans while sharpening the pencil toward the ones who come to work every day and build the things the company sells?
We seemed to always pay top dollar for "leadership" skills, yet scrimp as much as we could on "assembly" skills.
My Government does not help one iota either...
If I want to do what the company did, their stuff is "protected by patent and copyright", and I was not allowed to practice those skills outside the company.
However, if the company wanted to replace me and my skills with a lower cost equivalent provider, that was simply called "competition". Live with it.
I have no problem with the second concept if it goes both ways.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 28 2016, @05:46AM
If you are paying 1 leader per 100 drones, then it doesn't really matter if you pay that leader absurdly well- if they are above average, they are probably worth the money.
Taken another way, if you divided a big CEO's $10M/year up amongst 10,000 employees, what do you get? A virtually meaningless $1K/head bonus.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 28 2016, @06:01AM
Here's the problem, really.
He gets grape. I get cucumber.
I was taught in school I evolved from monkey. There is still some of it in me. But they won't teach this kinda stuff in business leadership classes.
Easier to just replace the pissed off monkey. Besides trained monkeys are easily replaceable.
The guy having the authority to give one a grape and the other a cucumber has valuable leadership skills.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 28 2016, @02:02PM
High paid leadership is often more "in the hot seat" with regard to job security than rank and file.
I also wonder about the political ramifications of being paid millions per year and just banking it and driving a Prius to work from your $200K house in the burbs... I suspect you won't stay "in the club" long, because you're too secure relative to the other members. Many of the higher ups (and there are virtually always higher ups) won't like an underling who can literally retire for life at any moment and not feel any financial pain.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 01 2016, @03:01AM
Seeing just how fragile my job was in Aerospace, I did exactly what you indicated. Very frugal. Basically I learned to "live out of the dumpster", as I flat refused to go into debt anymore than I had to, and paying off debts was #1 on my list. The way I interpret my holy books is debt is the "beast", and I am to avoid it like the plague.
It became glaring obvious to me that ( again referring to that old cappuchin monkey video [youtube.com] ) management was worth grape because they could find others like me that would work for cucumber. Management is smart enough to hold out for grape. You do not offer someone that high up cucumber.
Upon layoff, I had enough. If they want me to solve their problems, I want grape too. Not cucumber.
And no way did I want to ever find myself working under a grape-earner who denies me permission to use whatever resources I can scrounge up to get the job done. All he is doing is making me look incompetent so he can justify his grape at my expense. I have just had it, being marginalized and throttled back with office politics. It seems like they almost enjoy telling me - He gets you to work for cucumber, so why pay you grape? He gets grape because you did not demand one. Me stupid - me watch other get grape and I keep working, hoping one day I get grape too.
I see them doing bad science - should I really stick my neck out anymore to tell them what's gonna happen when they build it?
At the risk of preaching to the choir, how many of us have had the frustration of dealing with a "suit-guy" over computer security measures? Its like trying to talk a moth out of flying into the fire. As long as its little wing-muscles still work, its going in. When one gives a damm, he just gets marginalized then out.
I feel after a lifetime in the workforce, I have grown very comfortable with thermodynamics, physics, mechanics, coding, analog, digital, and code, and how to section a project so that each effort is addressed by the most efficient method... yet they still think I am gonna go through all the commuting and office politics for cucumber.
I end up doing other stuff that isn't nearly as stressful, and thankful that in my younger years I did not run up a whole bunch of debt.
While executives still pay grape for the management skill to tell the cucumber people that its not even worth applying.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 01 2016, @03:34AM
I thoroughly appreciate the grape/cucumber dilemma - though I must say, after 25 years of basically banana (grape > banana > cucumber), I'm thinking they can keep their grape if they expect me to be available evenings, weekends and air travel on short or no notice to get grape - keep the grape, enjoy your ulcers.
What I was wondering above, though, is: if you are a member of the grape club, but you live on cucumber slivers and bank all the grape - will the other grape earner/eaters trust you enough to keep you around?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 01 2016, @07:02AM
Its just been a thing with me that I do not like being in debt. I am a pay-as-you-go type as far as I can push it.
To me, a small house paid for is a lot more comfortable than a big house, which the bank can take away from me as soon as my income hiccups. Same with cars. I will drive a beat up old clunker into the ground before I will spend money on show stuff. The money I was earning, I put toward the debt of house purchase as fast as I could.
That is the reason I am still living in a house. And have the time to post on Soylent.
To me, I have been watching the games the bankers have been playing, and figured it was really risky to be in debt, as laws are in the banker's favor.
They can crash the economy any time they want to - on purpose. Bernake did it. The new woman is making noises like she's gonna do it again.
So, seems to behoove me to lay low, fix stuff for people, and not tolerate the stress of office-politicing and being the little monkey leashed to the organ grinder.
It was nice earning money when I could, but if I have to start all over from the bottom rung again, I just do not have the energy for it. Like you said about being available evenings, weekends, and travel at short notice, no thanks. Not unless I also get commensurate compensation.
I know full good and well the reason the other guy gets a grape is because he has the leadership skill to find someone else to work for cucumber. But not me. The whole thing has gotten so non-lucrative that work outside my specialization has become much more attractive.
For the time being, since the collapse of the soviet threat, there are a lot of very highly trained engineers desperate for work - I know quite a few of 'em - which abandoned engineering careers for something that paid more, like running restaurants and sports bars.
I can no longer work on a lot of stuff unless I have my microscope and other special tools around - and a lot of neatnik management type seem to think I can just write a memo to the offending circuit to make it behave. I have been working on this stuff for way too long to know what works and what doesn't, and I am in no mood to try to do all that office psychology to a non-technical person to persuade him to tolerate me getting the work done. They are wasting their time and I am wasting mine trying to play that game.
My salvation will be when someone who knows me and what I do brings me into some organization above the people who tell me what tools I am allowed to have and what software I must use. If I am gonna be of any use to an organization, I have to be above those who would bully me into unsound engineering.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 01 2016, @02:01PM
I understand where you are coming from, and I have a MSCE as a direct result of Regan leaving office, putting the first shock into engineering demand back in 1988 - easier to stay in school than fight unemployment for a year or more while competing against all the experienced guys that just got laid off. In 1991 I got lucky and found a local job in the newspaper.
All in all, I'd rather have more Sports Bars and less cruise missiles.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday March 02 2016, @02:03AM
I guess if one goes into stuff based purely on financial motivation, one is very likely to be trapped in a dead-end job, as others pull the strings like an organ grinder and his monkey. They create markets, then destroy them, leaving the gullible relentlessly spending all his resources in pursuit of the "we have opportunities in this field", which goes out of vogue just about the time you spent your resources to prepare yourself for their needs. By then, there are huge surpluses of those skillsets in the market, with a relentless race to the bottom in wage offered for that skillset.
I fell for it in Science/Engineering. And I am watching the powers that be try to motivate yet another generation to prepare themselves for such an endeavor which is useless to all but a few large corporations, which are outsourcing damn near everything anyway.
If I could do it all over again, with my love of engineering and science, done more down the line of running power plants or industrial machine maintenance. Something where the suit-guy actually needed me, and he would look like the kid who tore up the company truck if he had to come back to his management with my resignation in hand - a resignation tendered as a result of one of these persnickety political snits suit-guys seem to like to stir up. If there is one thing I have learned working in corporate, no one picks fights with someone they need. Unfortunately, managers have found the benefits of project compartmentalization, where no one engineer is allowed to know enough to "be dangerous" ( or to be very productive either ). And we are all about as interchangeable as a box of 6-32 nuts.
One presents himself, knowing too much... "overqualified".
The ones who know how to play the game get the grape.
The rest of us get cucumber.
I was always the user of the tool. Interchangeable with any other user of the tool. Cucumber.
The skill to advertise "opportunities" to users of the tool and select those who will work for cucumber: Grape!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 02 2016, @02:21PM
I met a very successful ex-CEO in his early 80s who said "All I did was not screw up too badly when the opportunity presented", also: "It's all about the people you hire, if 50% of the people I hired were at least not harmful to the organization, I was having a good year."
If I had it "to do over again" I would have gone for a more commodity engineering specialty - like Professional Engineer, preferably in Civil or some other field that you can find work in just about any town. The cucumbers are about 30% smaller, but you can get them anywhere you want to be. The power to choose your place of residence is a very valuable one.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday March 03 2016, @03:23AM
You ain't kiddin'! Chasing "opportunities" can be extremely expensive when one takes into account all the hands that extend for a check every time a house is bought or sold.
I figure I am talking at least $100K to cover cost of relocation - and if I have to relocate to a area I don't like, double that to relocate me back if the job does not pan out.
Nope - "they" won't go for that! They will pay ten times that for an executive, but not for an engineer. We are simply not worth that much.
They can always find a high-school stem student or new college graduate way into debt that will "fill the job" for cucumber.
No use being a "jack of all trades" if what the customer needs that hour is a jack to lift his car - to be disposed of as soon as the tire has been changed. ( yeh, I know, master of none! ). Been around long enough to design analog radios, digital radios ( QAM spread-spectrum stuff and associated Sigma-Delta converters ), microcontrollers, data structures, switching power supplies, plant power design, statistics, thermodynamics, propulsion systems, networking ( make my own packets, no less ), even building HVAC systems. But the customer wants someone with just the skills to to the one thing he needs right then for a temporary contract hire.
And wants me to do it at $30/hour.
And I drive 90 miles round trip through nasty city traffic during rush hour for that?
It sure made me realize how much better it would have been if I had taken my engineering degree and worked for the city water department. Would not be big cucumbers, but at least a steady supply of them.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 03 2016, @03:56AM
I recently met a man, 70 years old, who worked for the water department his whole life. High school graduate, transferred to water treatment from grounds maintenance. There's a man who didn't waste 6 years of his life getting $100K into debt for a piece of paper.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday March 03 2016, @05:19AM
I had just talked with a friend about this... he worked in the water department, like you said. He laughed at me and told me:
"My job is to keep 100 psi of fresh clean water in the pipe. I get paid whether or not the customer opens the tap.. You get paid only if he opens it."
Whereas I live in a world where they pay more for the men to keep the tap closed than for the men who provide the capability to do stuff.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday February 28 2016, @05:19AM
Does Germany even have an H1-B program?
Looked at new cars a few years back, test drove a Mercedes. The dash had maybe 12 buttons, 2 rows of 6. Only 3 did anything, all the others were placeholders for features that were either not available in my model, or cost more than I was willing to pay for.
Needless to say, I bought the Infiniti instead.
Relationship status: Available for curbside pickup.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 28 2016, @05:49AM
I wonder if Mercedes is going the way of HP.
Their latest issue of "Sprinter" diesel vans sure seems to be underwhelming as far as their reliability and cost of ownership goes.
I note Craigslist is absolutely full of people trying to rid themselves of these things...
I had my heart set on one of these until a few people warned me about how much it costs to maintain 'em.
I had based my estimate of Mercedes reliability primarily on a neighbor's track record with her 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300TD turbo diesel sedan. Which was stellar.
I ended up with a twenty year old Ford E-350. I still had my heart set on a Diesel engine. Got that.
I do not have a lot of money to spend for show, but I still need some way to haul my tools around.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @05:47AM
Fuck Hillary Clinton and the 1%
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @06:14AM
Your service is overrated. Your replacement is coming.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 28 2016, @09:45AM
[Quoting added]
You mean, cheaper whores? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:19AM
Niggers.
No, no, wait, listen. Some items are well-suited to be assembled by humans. For example, optical transceivers require some microscope SMT but they're small and niche so profit margins are high. You can take an experienced SMT soldering assember (a dime a dozen) and have them banging out transceivers more quickly and reliably than a pick-and-place, without all the hassle that results from machine failures (rotate in another assembler or hire another if necessary).
See? Insightful, no?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @01:38PM
Hillary Clinton will not have sex with you.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday February 28 2016, @02:07PM
How did you know it was Bill?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Sunday February 28 2016, @06:11AM
When it comes to assembling highly-customized autos, robotic workers can't yet match the dexterity and decision-making abilities of real people.
Although I'm a little surprised to read this in this context, after-all cars come with high price tags and strict regulations and safety guidelines that automation should ease the pressure of, but generally speaking I don't find it that shocking. Whenever they talk about automation there's this assumption that somehow we're all going to be put out of a job. The reason I've never been a'feared of it is because even today they can't make a robot that can reliably walk around a building. I mean, seriously, at the time of writing this post, the big joke was earlier this week Boston Dynamics showed a video of a guy kicking a robot over and lots of people were editing that together with footage from the Terminator. This is not a mass-produced machine that can easily be programmed to perform manual labor. The problem is you need something like that to, say, fully automate a Burger King.
That guy that flips your burger, he also cooks the fries, runs the cash register, brings you drinks, takes orders from the drive-thru, oh and he washes all of the dishes in the grill every night, arranges them so they can be used by the opening crew in the morning, mops the lobby, cleans all the tables, puts out condiments, and he unloads the food from the delivery truck into the freezer. Try to picture building a machine to reliably handle those tasks, or even a bunch of individual machines to handle those tasks separately, either way really, and doing so at an overall cost of less than what this dude would make. Not even close. Hell, my Roomba can only do two cycles before needing to be cleared.
It is interesting that an automotive company is doing this, but the reasoning is not that surprising. We're shockingly sophisticated as laborers.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by dr_barnowl on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:39AM
So maybe they'll just automate away all the management first [marshallbrain.com].
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday February 28 2016, @08:55PM
Rather, everything we have is designed for human use, and we expect robots to deal with it.
A robot might have trouble picking up a cup designed for humans, yes, but if we designed "cups" specifically for robots, humans may very well have even more trouble picking those up. Images for humans don't make sense for robots and vice versa. Tools designed for robots don't make sense for humans and vice versa.
I'm not saying we should patronize our robot overlords, but give your poor Roomba some understanding, okay?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday February 28 2016, @07:02PM
The Return Of The Meatbag.
I will have to buy inferior battery packs just to compete. Another possibility is global thermonuclear war, though. Let me contact a friend who works at NORAD.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @02:11AM
Once upon a time there was a tradition among Gulag folks. When about to finish a building designed for the rich and powerful of that age they would introduce cockroaches and bed bugs lovingly nursed in their concentration camps. The descendants still inhabit the iconic buildings; of the bugs that is.
Just a thought...