Most manufacturers are surprised to find out the best thing that could ever happen to their workforce is custom automation integration. The most new job opportunities for your workforce come out of integration of a custom robotic system.
Today we want to show you why there is nothing to fear from an automated manufacturing line, why an industrial robot supports labor, and how an automated machine system supports higher wages, upward mobility, and job security. These are the top four ways Automation Creates New Job Opportunities in Manufacturing.
Turnkey Automation Upskills the Workforce
If you are looking to promote, develop your career, and seek more satisfying employment, a turnkey automation integration is the easiest, fastest, and most cost effective way to generate upward mobility for the workforce already in place.
- Upskill Education Cost Savings With Turnkey Automation – The pressure to upskill, reeducate, and hustle often comes with recommendations to pursue an expensive degree, seek out paid seminars, or pay for an expensive certification. Surrendering that hard won income puts a tremendous financial burden on the American worker with federal and private student loan debt reaching $1.77 Trillion in 2023. In a custom machine integration, the integrator trains operators, maintenance crew, and team members on the technical operation of your automation with no monetary burden to the individual worker.
- Turnkey Automation Pays You to Train- Pursuing a degree, certification, or seminar on your own means surrendering time for recreation, time with family, and time to recharge outside of the workday. Part of the automation integration includes training on proper use of the machine within normal operating hours. You develop an entirely new transferrable skill without having to go outside of the work schedule.
Read More: DEVELOP LLC and the Invention of Considerate Succession Planning with Robots
Turnkey Automation Creates Upward Mobility: Guarantee Over Maybe
In a typical succession plan, a lot of companies choose to seek outside hires and hires fresh from academia rather than promote from within. While there are many studies that indicate promoting from within is a far better choice for an organization, the maybes for hiring outside of the business are as follows:
- Maybe New Perspectives- Maybe injecting a new hire into the organization can add new ideas, creative solutions, or innovative changes that improve the way your manufacturing runs. Maybe a new hire can serve as a check on echo chamber decision making.
- Maybe Cheaper Labor- Even a credentialed new hire starts without tenure based benefits, seniority based incentive packages, and employer contract obligations. Maybe you can get an experienced worker for a fraction of what you would normally pay in compensation.
- Maybe Grooming for Leadership- Sometimes the appeal of a blank slate that can be molded right out of academia drives the decision to hire outside. Maybe the right mentorship will instill the kind of loyalty and dedication that maintains a long tenure.
Turnkey automation though favors promotion from within and creates opportunities that make an internal hire much more compatible with any of the new positions created by the machine.
- No Precedent Engineering- While seeking a degreed or certified outside hire might be viable in other professions, they are not at automatic advantage with a custom turnkey machine. A custom turnkey solution is based on the processes specific to one business and even the most off the shelf turnkey machine contains enough new technology that a degree or certification won’t have foreknowledge on.
- Based On Internal Skills- The actions, conveniences, and nuances of the current workforce informs the turnkey automation design when you partner with a quality custom automation integrator. Any company looking to fill positions for new operators, new maintenance crew, or additional labor to work alongside the custom machine wants a candidate that has previous experience. Current employees are the only people who have anything resembling previous experience with the product assembly, manufacturing line, and work envelope.
- Design Optimized for Internal Hires- A quality automation integrator optimizes the machine with input from staff. Current hires have opportunities to influence the turnkey machine design to fit current needs, skills, and training. If the machine contains design elements based on current staff requests, the ideal candidates to work with the machine are current employees.
- Culture Compatibility- If you have current employees in good standing, they understand the purposes of the business, they know the strengths and challenges of the current team, and they are comfortable with the quirks of management, production, and company mission. The transition to an automated manufacturing work environment is managed easiest with the trust of internal hires.
A Company That Automates Needs More Workers, Not Less
A quality custom automation project can require a six to seven figure capital investment to automate a manufacturing line. A custom machine often requires loans, financing, and long term planning. These are the steps taken by a growing company. A growing company will need a variety of new professions inside their employment structure that far outstrips the employees they displace.
- Larger Salesforce- One of the typical qualities of turnkey automation is an increased production capacity. If your company suddenly can service more customer orders, you will need more salespeople.
- Machine Operators Needed- Even the most turnkey, lights out, hands off automated machine or robot needs operators. You will need trained staff capable of operating the machine, collecting data, and choosing manufacturing programs.
- Adding Maintenance Crew- You will need trained workers on site capable of servicing the machine. Making repairs, swapping parts, updating software, programming new manufacturing programs, and monitoring sensor data are all necessary requirements to the healthy longevity of your machine.
- More Manufacturing Labor- An automated machine is best used as a steppingstone for more manufacturing lines, additional property, and necessary equipment. Even if your turnkey automation displaces workers initially, the new hires needed quickly outstrip any displacement. In a quality automation integration, the business is encouraged to redirect any staff displaced by the machine into one of the many new opportunities created by the machine.
- Integrating New Classes of Labor – Ad hoc and discretionary responsibilities need delegation as a company grows. As a company expands in reaction to increased demand, additional customers, and larger facilities, they will need to make practical additions to their employment structure to support their core roles.
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- Customer Service- As a business grows their market share, they need to be proactive about customer requests, sales support, and quality requests. You will need a separate staff to manage these duties so your CEO, sales, and manufacturing teams can focus on revenue-seeking aspects of the business.
- Custodial- As a larger staff moves into a larger building, it no longer becomes practical to maintain cleanliness with only the discretion of the current workforce. You will need dedicated custodians to clean, maintain, and restock your business facilities.
- Marketing- Modern companies need to manage website search engine optimization (SEO), customer relationship management databases (CRM), in house graphic design, market research, communication systems, advertisement purchases, and trade show coordination.
- Administrative- As a business grows, you will need dedicated staff for booking travel, managing schedules, answering calls, updating records, supply ordering, reception, clerical duties, and directing clients.
- Financial- You will need specialized staff for managing payroll, taxes, insurance, bills of lading, purchase orders, budgets, employee timesheets, and inventory reconciliation.
- Security- As a business grows, so does its public profile. You will need data security to protect your intellectual property and financial information. You will need to manage security access with badges, background checks, and even on site security personnel.
Turnkey Automation Makes Your Company Attractive to Labor
Even if they do not know that turnkey automation is the cause, labor prefers working for manufacturers that automate their production. Turnkey automation links itself to job satisfaction and retention through every advantage of the machine.
- Eliminates High Turnover Positions- The biggest scapegoat for turnkey automation is the misleading claim that the machines steal jobs. Manufacturing is suffering from one of the largest labor shortages in history with no end in sight. The ideal machine eliminates the positions that no company can hire for; the dull, repetitive, low career advancement, ergonomically challenging, and uncomfortable jobs. By automating these manufacturing processes, you do not just ensure the uninterrupted delivery of your products, you improve the public perception of potential hires.
- Safety- As a company grows, sometimes decisions about safety are made out of stop gap necessity rather than proactivity. Even the threat of accident, discomfort, or exposure can drive away labor from your production floor. A quality automation integration comes with safety training and formal standards for safety. An effective automation integration offloads the dangerous and risky portions of the manufacturing line to the turnkey machine.
- Improved Work Environment- When you offload the unsafe, high turnover, and repetitive portions of the work environment to turnkey automation, that leaves the remaining portions of the work environment (the portions of the work environment your labor force will operate in) optimized for people.
- Consistent Job Responsibilities- In a high turnover manufacturing environment, leadership that should be focused on improving revenue, analyzing production, and pursuing growth must divide their attention towards making sure those employment gaps are filled. They must regularly disrupt the flow of the workday pulling team members off lines to meet shorts on quotas. Often these managers must take matters into their own hands, performing the work of manufacturing labor during no shows, spikes in production, or absence. When a turnkey machine owns these high turnover tasks, you allow your workers to complete their assigned revenue generating duties without forcing them to compensate for gaps.
- Job Security- A job that can be displaced by turnkey automation is not a secure job. The jobs that a turnkey automation integration requires your company to adopt to support the technology ARE secure jobs. These new jobs automation creates come with transferrable skills, steady hours, and formality.
Turnkey Automation: What Every Manufacturing Worker Does not Know They Really Want
We hope you have stayed with us through this explanation for why turnkey automation does not just make new jobs for manufacturers but makes those job opportunities better. Everyone wants a career trajectory. Everyone wants consistency in their job. Everyone wants a stable, clean, safe work environment. Everyone wants job security. Everyone wants to grow with their company. Everyone wants turnkey automation.
Tell us more about your project, schedule a virtual meeting, or call (262)-622-6104 to find out how turnkey automation can make new job opportunities on your manufacturing line today.
Your workforce will thank you.
About the Authors:
Matt Moseman leads as President of DEVELOP, with a strong foundation from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where he earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in New Product Management. Moseman’s career highlights include his pivotal role in founding NodeUDesign, innovating in automation hardware, and driving DEVELOP LLC to the forefront of industrial robotics with a focus on enhancing productivity and efficiency.
Sean McKittrick, as Project Program Coordinator at DEVELOP LLC, brings a multifaceted background from Knox College. McKittrick’s first year at DEVELOP LLC has been marked by significant team growth and zero turnover, showcasing his ability to build a collaborative and effective work environment. His experience spans quality management in healthcare software to managing production for a million pounds of material monthly, highlighting his diverse expertise in project coordination and manufacturing excellence.