With customisation key to wooing modern consumers, the flexibility and dexterity of human workers is reclaiming space on Mercedes’s assembly lines. That bucks a trend that has given machines the upper hand over manpower since legendary US railroad worker John Henry died trying to best a motorised hammer more than a century ago.”Robots can’t deal with the degree of individualisation and the many variants that we have today,” Markus Schaefer, the German automaker’s head of production, said at its factory in Sindelfingen, the anchor of the Daimler unit’s global manufacturing network. “We’re saving money and safeguarding our future by employing more people.”
Source: Mercedes kicks robots off assembly line
Nice to see! There are so many things that are better done by humans, and the cost of employing humans to do useful tasks well has huge social and psychological benefits as well.
