Mercedes replaces robots with humans on the production line
Chalk up a win for humanity. In spite of futurists鈥� predictions that automation will slowly replace most people鈥檚 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鈥檚 not that robots aren鈥檛 hard workers, or that they aren鈥檛 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 onto its assembly line.
But robots aren鈥檛 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.
S-Class sedans have four different kinds of caps for the tire valves and options for features such as temperature-controlled cupholders and carbon-fiber trim. That鈥檚 a lot of different options to sort through, and Mercedes found that it was taking too long to reprogram its robotic workers to distinguish between different parts and adapt to new tasks.
鈥淭he variety is too much to take on for the machines,鈥� Markus Sch盲fer, Mercedes鈥檚 head of production, . 鈥淭hey can't work with all the different options and keep pace with changes.鈥澛�
As automakers offer more and more highly customized cars in response to customer demand, humans will likely work alongside robots on the production line. At Mercedes, smaller robots are being used to handle repetitive tasks while skilled human workers handle jobs requiring manual dexterity and decision-making. That careful balance of labor allows the Sindelfingen factory to assemble more than 400,000 cars each year.聽
The trend of human-robot collaboration is born out in a released this week by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), a non-profit group of robotics companies and institutes. Robotic workers are becoming more sophisticated and easier to program, IFR President Joe Gemma said in a 鈥淩obotic workers will in [the] future be found working hand-in-hand with human staff, helping to replace traditional, rigid production processes with flexible structures.鈥�
The report found that automakers鈥� collective investments in robotics rose 43 percent from 2013 to 2014, and estimated that by 2018 there will be more than 1.3 million industrial robots working in factories around the world. As Mercedes鈥檚 hiring move shows, the automation trend doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean human workers will be phased out, but it does suggest that the employment landscape will probably look very different 20 years from now.
