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This is being presented as a good thing? I'm sorry, I take no pride in having humans replace robots for repetitive manual labor. The story is either a weird ma

This is being presented as a good thing? I'm sorry, I take no pride in having humans replace robots for repetitive manual labor. The story is either a weird marketing ploy, or it's misreporting, or it's downright stupid. You do not need to replace robots with humans to improve manufacturing processes. Perhaps the reality is that they're simply hiring more manufacturing and operations experts to oversee continuous process improvements and this hiring is being misinterpreted?

wpietri 13y ago
No, this article is very much in line with Toyota's roots. Toyota's history is one of treating their workers as valuable participants who use their brains at least as much as their hands. They eschew all sorts of fancy technology, not just robots, because technology is relatively inflexible. This approach allowed them to kick the asses of the US car manufacturers in the post-WWII period, continuing to increase productivity per worker long after US manufacturers leveled out. Their approach isn't to hire experts. It's to turn their workers into experts on their work, and on improving that work. This has been literally incomprehensible [1] to US car companies because it's of the dominant US paradigm, managerialism [2]. See, e.g., Toyota Kata for more on how Toyota approaches this. [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/n... [2] http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-Economic-Controversies/dp/178032071X http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-Eco...