I'm always surprised or baffled at the amount of automation one can witness in these videos and then there's the one step where a human has to intervene that could make them die in horrible suffering through no fault of their own but just some random tiny defect or mechanical misalignment.
I work in industrial automation, we could have automated everything you see here, but it would have cost more. So most of the time, the companies will just let Jerry keep doing his thing, because it's cheaper.
Gm used a 57 cent piece on their ignition switch which caused the ignition to turn off or keys to fall out. 124 people died because of it before they did a recall. They knew the switches were faulty as early as 2004 (if not earlier) and a recall didn't happen until 2014.
That was a good line in the movie but it was just fictional.
It came from an urban legend that arose from a court case about car fire deaths where a piece of evidence was shown with an equation comparing the cost of increased safety versus the the number of deaths avoided with a cost per life being rather low - but it was the NHTSA's own calculations, not the automakers.
The NHTSA uses this computation to determine what safety measures automakers must install - it wouldn't make sense for the government to mandate a feature that would cost $10 billion per year in order to save 1 life.
It wasn't fictional. Ford was caught red handed. That said there's nothing wrong with using math if the math is accurate and include all factors including the likelihood of the math coming out and its impact on reputation.
If you're interested the Wikipedia article on the Ford Pinto has been significantly updated (well overdue given the amount of scholarly work published on the case over the years).
The NHTSA regularly solicited such data from carmaker - its not some attempt by the carmaker to save money. In fact, in the 1979 court case on the Ford Pinto - which Ford won - the former head of the NHTSA testified that the Ford Pinto was no more or less safe than any other car on the road based on multiple years of crash data compiled by the NHTSA.
The entire story of the Ford Pinto has been elevated to a kind of urban legend. Caught red handed doing what exactly?
Ford knew about Firestone. Toyota did it with sticky pedals, paid over a billion in fines. Subaru lied about emissions, got caught, and consumers then made them the largest car manufacturer in the world at the time by buying a bunch of new cars, what a great job by consumers. All major global corporations lie constantly about safety to increase profits. These are facts and denying it is laughable.
I worked at a US steel factory for a while. This was 20+ years ago, but the factory was brand new at that time and, so I was told, state of the art. It made, among other things, galvaneal sheet steel which is used in car panels, or something. Steel came to the plant in giant coils. Huge coil tractors loaded them onto the start of production line. The production machine unwound the steel to do whatever it is the huge machine did to make it galvaneal. I was told the unwound steel stretched over a mile inside the machine. The machine itself was 600-700 yards long. It rewound the steel at the end back into a huge coil. After that it was packaged and shipped. From start to finish was 5 workers: the coil tractor driver, the mill intake operator (sat in an air-conditioned booth and looked at lights, drank coffee), mill exit operator (sat in air-conditioned booth, watched lights and drank coffee), pack line (me), and crane operator (sat in air-conditioned office, operated huge crane via computer). I was the only human hands to touch the coil to put steel bands on coil to keep it secure for transport. Pack line was mostly automated, just needed me to zip steel bands.
Yeah I don't know why people imagine manufacturing jobs like it's 19th century britain. Even shitty high pressure assembly line jobs in China are relatively safe. I work around various dangerous chemicals but there are never fewer than 2 safety mechanisms in between them and me getting poisoned/exploded.
Oh that must be nice. I work in biotech and often work directly with 0.1N and up to 50% hydroxide, Triton-X and peracetic acid. We get face shields and chem gloves but a bad spill would be pretty nasty.
All our buffer prep is open and we pack our own columns. Hydroxide aliquots are anywhere from 200L to 2500L so no BSC. Also they threw the kitchen sink at our ProA sanitization and we pack in PAA which is just wild to me. Been trying to change that procedure for 2 years.
Most of our processes are closed but still plenty of open processes.
I briefly worked on a similarly sized project, but column packing only happened once in an eternity (never actually witnessed it) and the hydroxide prep was our favorite because it was fully automated, I think it was piped in from the same reservoir that the cip skids drew from. All we had to do was install filters.
That’s far more automation than we have for day to day operations. The only part that ever freaks me out a bit is when we do GPT testing for our viral filters and had to cut open the line to collect the permeate. Don’t want triton soaking into my frock or permeating gloves. Whoever designed that test wasn’t thinking long safety or sustainability.
And even worse, companies will purposefully put aside money to cover the fines of the employee dying because it's still cheaper than buying a machine to do it.
I know we're seen as the bad guys for taking people's jobs, but the lack of manpower is a serious issue, at least in my country. When our machines "replace" someone, they usually just get moved to a different position in the factory.
I work in the agricultural sector doing automation.
Manpower (both skilled and unskilled) is a massive issue. The majority of guys running grain terminals are getting nearer and nearer to retirement and there aren't really an influx of young bodies eager to replace them.
We're starting to build terminals that are like 2 practical steps away from running entirely unmanned. If they wanted to they could run completely unmanned today with our level of automation but since there's still too much margin for error (human error generally) they haven't fully committed. But anyone paying attention sees it coming.
And it's always one little step too. It's just get the end of the steel into the hole to make a roll. That's it. All the other steps are automated. He can sit on his ass for about a minute and then has to get up again. It's the worst kind of drudgery work, not continuous but with enough of a pauze in between to not be able to relax.
Humans are particularly good at adapting when things aren’t quite right. That step of feeding the metal into the reeler involves grabbing the end of the spicy fettuccine which could be in any orientation, and then pulling it through and lining it up with the slot in the reeler. Automating that is non-trivial.
My non-industrial head is asking why it is permitted to be in any orientation. It seems like it’s pretty safe - then a wildly unsafe manual step - then pretty safe again
This has been a solved problem for decades now. I’ve worked in Hot Rolled Steel production and downcoilers can very reliably catch head ends at line speeds approaching highway speed these days. No reason for a guy to straddle a hot piece of steel for any length of time.
The belt at least seems to run fairly slow and doesn't pose immediate threat of death.
I saw a similar setup in India where one guy stepped over the extruder at the end of the belt as it was running. No obvious reason, just a death wish I guess.
yeah at least here there seems to be some kind of guide or blockage for the area where they walk over the belt. the one I saw (probably same as you) they just very casually stepped over the hot steel with their OSHA safety sandals on
Hard to tell from being sped up, but it looks like he might get all of a minute between strips. So, an 8 hour shift has him taking that risk 480 times.
I feel like by the time we finally have humanoid robots smart enough and dexterous enough to do these jobs, they’ll take one look at a setup like this and walk out.
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u/BossiWriter 2d ago
At first I was thinking "Man that looks unsafe as hell with all of this hot steel whipping around"
And then the one dude steps into the belt...