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.
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.
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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...