I like to imagine semiconductor manufacturing is the most extreme case of automation we have today. One shift supervisor can oversee thousands of wafers per ho

I like to imagine semiconductor manufacturing is the most extreme case of automation we have today. One shift supervisor can oversee thousands of wafers per hour. Humans aren't even in the factory anymore due to defect rates. Many employees are asleep at home with tool alarms and/or statistical triggers over metrology data that will page them out of slumber if something goes wrong. It feels like something exponential starts to happen once you get into automation rates exceeding 99%. There isn't a single tool in a modern fab that isn't on the automated material handling system. They build dedicated bridges just for these robots to travel between the fab buildings.