'Gods' Make Comeback at Toyota as Humans Steal Jobs From Robots

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-06/humans-replacing-robots-herald-toyota-s-vision-of-future.html

by sologoub • 12 years ago

105 45 12 years ago

dang2• 12 years ago

The original url was blogspam [1]. I changed it to point to the original source. When you submit an article, please make sure it isn't lifting from some other source; if it is, please follow the HN guidelines and submit the original instead.

[1] http://www.leftlanenews.com/toyota-assembly-line-robots-repl...

kposehn• 12 years ago

I wondered how this one got posted then. I did this url on the original story a day ago, glad to see it made the front page :)

sologoub3• 12 years ago

Sorry, I've read leftlanenews.com for a few years now and never thought of it as blogspam. Not affiliated with them in any way shape or form...

If you could share guidelines of how you determine blogspam would be helpful, as I regarded these guys as a credible car-related news source.

Edit: To clarify, I view this site as a minor competitor to something like Edmunds or KBB (for their new car stuff, not the used pricing book).

dang2• 12 years ago

By "blogspam" I didn't mean that the entire site was junk, or that you were spamming HN. I'm using that word in a much narrower sense, for an article that is merely a summary of some other original source. In such cases the HN guidelines call for submitting the original source instead.

Many tech sites consist of nothing but such short summary articles lifted from elsewhere. When a lot of those get submitted to HN, we ban the site. But I didn't ban leftlanenews.com—just changed the url of this one story. If other articles on that site are original, substantive content, you're still welcome to post them here.

sbierwagen• 12 years ago

Naked, obvious PR plant.

wwweston• 12 years ago

It may be PR, but if so, it's the best kind -- there's a lesson to reflect on here.

There are limits to automation (and, more generally, any reduction of knowledge/craft to process). As you depend more on robots (literal or figurative) to execute process, over time you're likely losing a body of knowledgable/craft-capable practitioners. You can automate worker function, but until we have AI, not their perspective and the potential expertise that comes with engaging with a task over time. And you concentrate the responsibility for improvement in a smaller number of hands.

That doesn't mean there aren't also yields to automation -- sometimes big ones. Just means there are limits too.

By way of comparison... it's great that many software developers are much more productive in Ruby or Python or whatever than they would be in C or assembly. But when the time comes where you have to make a key optimization, if you don't have a "god" around who can be productive at a lower level, you may be bound to a sub-optimal approach (you might not even know about the potential optimizations).

rodgerd• 12 years ago

As you depend more on robots (literal or figurative) to execute process, over time you're likely losing a body of knowledgable/craft-capable practitioners.

We should understand this well from software. There's plenty of airline and financial software people don't want to meddle with too much because the people who remember the business rules behind it are retired or dead.

jpwright• 12 years ago

I can't wait to pick up a hand-crafted artisanal Camry from local Kami-sama.

alrs2• 12 years ago

The future of software is the aggregate of teenagers the world over messing around with Linux, Arduino, etc.

Without entry-level jobs they're just going to be distro-hoppers who never get a foot in to industry.

sanderjd• 12 years ago

This is a tantalizing comment, but I'm having trouble seeing how it's relevant to the OP. Care to elaborate?

alrs2• 12 years ago

Manual work is being brought back so as to help develop experts.

sologoub3• 12 years ago

The one thing that's not very clear, is whether they are focusing on specific high-end cars for this hand-crafter stuff or not.

If FLA and such, then this isn't all that novel. Even relatively modestly priced S2000 had a lot of manual labor in the assembly process. (Don't think it had a hand-built crank, but for a 30k that's a bit lavish...)

itazula• 12 years ago

The main point isn't to build hand-crafted cars. The main point is to understand the process and materials.

parennoob• 12 years ago

Perhaps I am searching too closely for parallels here, but what would be the analogue of this from a software engineering perspective?

Maybe writing something like an HTTP server in assembly, or something? I remember this (https://github.com/nemasu/asmttpd) popping up on HN some time ago. Writing your own kernel, or compiler? Building your own 8-bit microcomputer, and then running something on it? (A project like that was part of a course I took at college, and it did a decent job at demystifying many common concepts about computing).

ojii• 12 years ago

those examples all sound like very good parallels. you're building something "by hand" to learn how they work/are constructed. the software you ship you will still build using "robots" (eg linux, nginx, your framework of choice) but do so remembering the lessons you learned.

knome• 12 years ago

Reminds me of Asimov's short story "Profession".

http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html

zem• 12 years ago

my favorite of his stories, and that's saying a lot

cc439• 12 years ago

That was a great read, hopefully I really took something from it.

riffraff• 12 years ago

I initially thought you referred to "the feeling of power"[0], which is also somewhat related, but apparently this is a different one, thanks for sharing.

[0] http://www.themathlab.com/writings/short%20stories/feeling.h...

_Adam• 12 years ago

Great story, but there's one part of it that bothers me.

I really don't like how it portrays humanity as a race where only a tiny percentage have the ability to innovate. All humans have this ability! Not all may use it, but we all have it.

Yes.. I know I'm pointing out factual inaccuracies from a science fiction story written 55 years ago, but because he used the term "human" explicitly I feel the need to do so.

kevingadd2• 12 years ago

I'd love to agree with your idealism but I think it's a bit irrational.

It's impossible for us to KNOW whether a given person has the ability to innovate, or the potential to be brilliant. That's absolutely true. However, we have no concrete evidence to support the idea that any given individual CAN innovate, or has the potential for brilliance.

Quite the opposite: We already know of many heritable traits that impair an individual's ability to compete in the workplace, or perform effectively in difficult fields. Most of these are classified as diseases or mental disorders, but regardless...

Acknowledging that not every person is necessarily born with identical talents and capabilities is important if we want to empower these people to do good things and achieve what the rest of us can achieve. Claiming that everyone has equal potential implies that those who don't overachieve are simply not trying hard enough.

(I say this as a person who, due to environment or biology, ended up with an unpleasant assortment of conditions that impair my ability to compete in the workplace.)

edanm• 12 years ago

Errr, what's that now? Since you're making a factual statement, I think it's important to understand whether it's actually correct, or just "poetically" or "hopefully" correct.

And I think it's pretty clear that saying all humans have this ability is wrong.

Firstly, there are numerous edge cases, e.g. people who are mentally handicapped in ways that preclude this.

Secondly, there is a broad range of intelligence levels in humans. Clearly, the innovation capabilities of people at the low end of the intelligence scale is either absent, or very very limited. Not to mention that, just as clearly, most of us aren't Einstein and aren't going around making giant contributions to science.

Ignoring the fact that there are inherent differences between humans, some of them large and unfortunate, is just a way of closing our eyes and burying our heads in the sand to how the world actually works.

ABNWZ• 12 years ago

Thank you for posting this, it's a truly incredible read.

femto• 12 years ago

Toyota has recognised that if you only have robots then innovation stops, because you forget the skills that the robots are replacing.

Experience in manipulating materials, and doing it manually, is a valuable thing. Toyota isn't going to start replacing robots with humans, but the humans need an in depth understanding of what the robots are doing, so they can then improve what the robots are doing. The best way to learn what the robots are doing is to do it: get in there and watch how the metal flows, how it reacts to heat and so on.

This has the potential to be an engineer's utopia. Presumably the valuable thing isn't what the "gods" make (the robots make the stuff that sells for money), but what they learn during the making process. Thus the "gods" are free to work on things that won't immediately sell. Imagine a job where the brief was "make whatever you like, just be sure to learn a lot while you do it". It sounds like Toyota is rediscovering the golden era of the Industrial Lab (Bell, IBM, ... ).

nickpinkston• 12 years ago

This was the point of Toyota's LF-A program right?

hkmurakami• 12 years ago

Also, it works well in Japan and for Toyota in particular because of the lack of labor mobility there. And I don't just mean Japan's general lack thereof; rather, I'm pointing to the fact that (1) in Aichi prefecture, the only major Auto maker is Toyota (whereas Hamamatsu and Tokyo regions have several), (2) selling a house in the countryside (which the surrounding regions of Toyota city is) is always a money losing proposition in Japan, making a long distance move very difficult, and (3) once you are an employee at one of the Toyota Group companies, you cannot change jobs to another Toyota Group company.

The "Gods" that you nurture will stay with you for perpetuity (or retirement) under these conditions.

disclosure: I was a researcher at one of the Group companies.

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

Wages are shockingly low in Japan. A junior developer in Tokyo would be lucky to make $45k (at a domestic firm).

gilgoomesh• 12 years ago

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?

wpietri2• 12 years 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/n...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-Eco...

rdc12• 12 years ago

Reminds me of this Plato quote about written record.

" If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows."

epaladin• 12 years ago

This should be brought up early in schooling. Being in the habit of committing actual knowledge to memory vs relying on the ability to look something up seems to be one of the factors that can differentiate those who seem like experts. And it seems like being able to convince others of your expertise is almost more important than actually being an expert much of the time...

gshubert17• 12 years ago

Thanks for this reference (dialog Phaedrus, 274e-275b). This quotes Socrates telling a story about an Egyptian king telling the inventor of writing that he's not the best judge of its ultimate usefulness. Ironically, Plato was a writer and disseminated his thoughts by writing, which is how we have them.

delluminatus• 12 years ago

Interestingly, Plato had significant reservations toward writing, and writing philosophy in particular. He believed (as common among the ancient Greeks) that philosophical truths emerged and were understood only through a spoken dialectic. This probably accounts for his books' unusual format.

I have seen one particularly amusing quote where Plato basically says that he would never write down philosophy. But I forget the exact wording and I can't find the quote now.

ignostic• 12 years ago

I understand why some (especially here) might think manual labor is useless, but those more hardware-oriented people might understand the value. Even if you've worked on a lawn mower or jimmy rigged a gadget you might understand the potential gains.

When you tinker with something you see why it works, how it might work better, etc. Sometimes a software architect needs to dig into the code. Sometimes a mechanical engineer just needs to work with the parts. This has the added benefit of putting the mind in a relaxed state where creativity tends to occur. I know there are studies along these lines, too, but I'm not great at tracking down or validating nuero/psych studies.

I have no idea if the benefits I mentioned the intended result, but I think it's interesting. It may or may not be more beneficial to have people repair broken things, solve mechanical problems, or create non-standard parts from scratch to see what happens.

colechristensen• 12 years ago

There are jobs suited to humans and jobs suited to machines. Most things which are automated by machines ought to be done by humans some of the time for the exact reasons you specify: people will be more clever than machines in some ways for a very long time.

---

It relates tangentially to my struggles with Ubuntu and modern automated configuration tools .. that is, one gets the general feeling that a whole lot of it is designed and implemented by folks who didn't ever really master doing it by hand making the increasing layers of abstraction more and more shaky.

...or maybe I'm just old and grumpy.

ginko• 12 years ago

FWIW, Volkswagen does something similar for their Phaetons in Dresden:

http://www.glaesernemanufaktur.de/en/

jmt7les• 12 years ago

But if we let the robots handle all the manual labor, and had everyone working in advancing physics and such we could make so much more useful progress. Robots are inevitable.

wpietri2• 12 years ago

That's a bold but unsupported assertion.

Immersion in the details of a craft is what advances the craft. If I'm going to automate something, the first thing I do is to try it manually, because that's how I know the right way to automate it. But once I bake that knowledge into inaccessible software, I have basically stopped progress.

The number of people who can advance basic physics is relatively small, and when they're doing it, they still need food to eat and cars to drive. The way to maximize the number of people doing physics is to make every other craft as productive as possible. Robots will have a place to play in that, but not in a naive "replace all persons with robots" way.

'Gods' Make Comeback at Toyota as Humans Steal Jobs From Robots

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