By f cecconi
MANY PUNDITS PROPOSE that universal STEM training is needed to evolve our workforce into “de facto junior engineers”. It may have been necessary to have the entire population trained in the latest technology when our ancestors were hunters and gatherers, however we discovered that technology advanced quicker when subsets of the population specialized. Amazingly, most people in the world are able to drive a car, yet cars contain the most advanced set of computers, artificial intelligence and state of the art technology that anyone interfaces with on a daily basis. Advancement in computers have made most of this technology user invisible.
I AGREE THAT industry has gone though a period where computerized production equipment and robots were anything but user invisible. Many companies suffered because it was difficult to find people with enough skills and talent to run this technology. This is most likely why many players currently focus on STEM talent education.
YET MOORE’S LAW keeps marching on. Computer horsepower that occupied whole buildings now can fit in your smart phone. More important, is that it took just a few innovators who applied lean multiplication and leveraged their talents to embed computer intelligence into manufacturing equipment creating user friendly systems. Now manufacturing workers do not really need specialized education to work on the shop floor.
Photo courtesy of Colin&Claire
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IN THE LOGISTICS INDUSTRY, Kiva Systems founder Mick Mountz experienced the herculean challenges of material handling with limited computer help first hand. With Professors Peter Wurman and Raffaello D’Andrea he created a robot based warehouse material handling system that is twice as productive and has a pick error rate that is 1/10 that of competing methods. Workers become fully productive using this system in two days time as the computer makes all the major decisions for them. It now takes only a small group of highly specialized engineers to set up a warehouse initially. After that, the embedded “distributed intelligence” takes over, such that the technology is user invisible to the workers in the warehouse.
I JUST ISSUED a new manual for an Wesley electric tugger. The new generation onboard computer is a lot more intelligent than ever before. It now seamlessly adjusts the controls so that the unit operates at its optimum level without the user having to think about it. It took a few highly talented people to design this onboard computer, but the user uses it seamlessly.
THE LEAN MOVEMENT is all about lean multiplication. We like to splash the headline grabbing disruptive changes, however it is the continual small improvements done by most lean practitioners that add up to the big change announced in the headlines.
SO NO, NOT EVERYONE will need to have top level STEM talent and training. We will continue to specialize as we always have. Those wishing to make the big dollars designing equipment and machinery will need even more advanced talent and training in STEM technologies. However, the equipment users will find it easier than ever to use the resulting equipment and will be able to focus on their strengths in the marketplace.
