Mercedes Replaces Robots With People

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According to this report, Mercedes has replaced assembly line robots with real people. Uh oh, now robots are going to be really pissed at us.


"Robots can't deal with the degree of individualization and the many variants that we have today," said the company's head of production Markus Schaefer. "We're saving money and safeguarding our future by employing more people." The change comes at a time when a number of companies are replacing people with robotic devices.
 
If I had to guess, this is only going to be on their higher-end models?

Clicking through now.

EDIT: Exactly this.

As it turns out, robots can't keep up with the degree of customization that the automaker offers on its S-Class sedans.
Click to expand...
 
Bullshit, I bet this creates a dozen jobs at most. They can't be competitive with manual labour on large-production models.
 
so you want that candy colored paint and the robot arm that sprays a inch strip on the car, can not look at the paint and make sure that the candy shows three tones... or say the wheels are supposed to be mat silver verse chrome... maybe that is why you get six colors from Ford and Chevy unless you custom order the car. If you custom order the car they paint it to match a swatch... if you buy a package they chose a couple colors each year. sounds like some one got bored with only colors each year and decided to just pay people to air brush over the primer... Maybe have the wheels get put on by people and they check the tire and wheel alignment at the dealership... I know some one who bought one overseas and got lifetime maintenance as part of the car's cost... which suggests it was not likely about making more jobs but simply that using a robot arm on all their lines was limiting their ability to make appealing cars... my guess they try it on couple lines if the craftsmanship falls below acceptable limits they shrug and find different workers... it's not like the robot have a union to say you have to employ so many for so many hours and they have to have tea and crumpets on Tuesdays and cheesesteaks every Wednesday... and every forth people hold a party on company time. Unions make sense if people have nothing invested in the company as there is no to say the training I teach these people will be wasted when they are unhappy working something different than agreed to. People who want to change the argree afterwards are the reason for the silly requests usually so they have something they can trade as an option later on. The spin likely just upsets people because they see what they were going to see anyway.
 
Quix said:
Bullshit, I bet this creates a dozen jobs at most. They can't be competitive with manual labour on large-production models.
Click to expand...

When you're selling a limited number of $100,000+ cars, you can afford to pay a little extra labor.
However, that's far out of my price range, so I need cheaper robot labor to build any car I can afford.
 
Mercedes, to their credit, has hauled themselves from being -statistically- the worst car maker on earth back to being one of the best.

They've done a whole lot of smart things since they removed the puss oozing lesion that was Chrysler.
 
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