Overview on Automation

Automation has spread outside its industrial beginnings to encompass implications in medicine safety, navigation, agribusiness, architecture, entertainment, and a variety of other fields. Robotics and Artificial intelligence are two disciplines that look toward the future of automation and semi-automation technologies. Human Interaction and human connections are becoming extremely relevant in both sectors, as is the promise of Web and Cloud Applications.

What is Automation?

Automation occurs whenever a machine does basic, repetitive tasks based on specific inputs or procedures.

Automation chores are jobs that are repetitive and systematic. Consider an industrial plant that repeatedly produces the same item in the same manner.

Automated technology requires manual programming and personal supervision to be efficient. That suggests that individuals must predict each conceivable action for the computer to perform the automated task properly. Engineers must actively make appropriate modifications if the conditions change.

What’s the Difference Between Automation and AI (Artificial Intelligence)?

Automation is not the Same as AI

Automation is when machinery follows a sequence of commands that are solely specified by individuals. The technology cannot do an operation that is not expressly defined in the rules.

However, with AI, the computer may use broad guidelines laid down by humankind to establish its strategies for solving problems.

Types of Automation

An automation process may be divided into three categories:

1. Fixed Automation: Fixed automation technology is used more often for goods with a higher growth rate; as a result, the large upfront expenditure of a fixed-automated facility may be distributed across a large cluster. Items, as varied as plastic toys and pencils, are manufactured using fixed-automation technologies.
2. Programmable Automation: Programmable automation technology is a tool that helps manufacture a variety of comparable goods. A recorded programme controls its manufacturing process but is subject to change depending on the need for extensive reconditioning and mechanical adjustments.
3. Flexible Automation: Flexible automated technology is a type of customisable automating process where a machine-based manufacturing system may modify the production program as well as the parameters and physical robotic arms or cells with relatively low downtime.

What is the Automation Timeline?

Scholars cannot state with certainty how mechanisation has progressed. Industrialisation throughout the 17th century saw significant turning points. In the late 1800s, the (textile) garment industry embraced steam or boiler powered mills. By the twentieth century, every industry was turning to automation for redundant tasks, resulting in massive gains in output while also causing the first confrontations over “depreciation of capabilities” and “human replacement by technology.”

The discovery of electricity aided the automation of industrial production. Henry Ford built the very first assembly line for the Model T automobile type in 1913.

In 1956, George Devol, a native of the United States, built the very first animatronic robot. Smart manufacturing gained speed with extensive automated processes in vehicle industries in the 1970s and 1980s. Robots have gradually taken over other productive duties typically executed by individuals in these “lights out” fields. Factory robotisation has advanced tremendously in recent years. 

Advantages of Automation

1. Improved Efficiency and Increased Yield: Automation improves efficiency levels by increasing the manufacturing speed, eliminating obstacles, and saving time.
2. Enhanced and Consistent Quality: Manufacturing efficiency is achieved since automation manages the whole production chain, from raw components to finished goods. The consistency of customer satisfaction is a characteristic that can make or break a customer’s trust.
3. Cost Savings: Robotics lowers the overall cost of production. It is clear that with mechanisation, the production unit cost is decreased by a significant amount. The cost reductions are mostly attributed to the complete removal of human resources.
4. Fewer Injuries: Automated technologies almost eliminate staffing, resulting in a reduction in the frequency of fatalities.
5. Greater Production Planning: Given the highly precise scheduling, mechanisation improves the regulation of output pace and flow.

The Problems with Automation

1. Massive Capital Expenditure: Mechanisation necessitates a greater upfront cost, as well as issues such as return on capital, devaluation, or energy requirements. As a result, automation is an extravagance for small businesses.
2. Holiday Period Would Indeed be Catastrophic: Automation facilitates the production of goods, so prices will decline if the increasing output doesn’t have high demand. As a result, the administration must be aware of the requirements.
3. Dehumanisation: We cannot overlook the fact that employing individuals in a specific factory has its allure and provides a sense of accomplishment that thousands of automation and robotics cannot.

Automation has revolutionised the way industries work; we cannot deny this fact. Without these innovations, we would have been unable to save time and costs and increase efficiency. On the flip side, however, automation will steal one job after the other, increasing poverty and unemployment.