Behind every automated robotic factory, there are dedicated professionals who must maintain, upgrade and watch the systems. A smooth running manufacturing plant is the key to success and efficiency is the key. Most modern day factories have developed some incredible processes and are adamant about maintaining a Zero Lost Units goal. It is paramount to them. So much so that the 24-hour factories over work the dedicated humans watching over them, many in fact complain that there is not a lot of time to do any more than eat and sleep and watch the machines get it done.

Does this sound very "Black Belt" Six Sigma; GE to you? Well it is, as ISO protocols and all have become the name of the game. Incidentally my uncle started "Six Sigma" and GE borrowed it for their buzzword. You cannot imagine how much could be lost with a downtime problem with such a factory, ouch. In some cases such as auto assembly lines the costs of an outage can be millions per minute?

Recently in talking with a gentleman in China who said that when an employee messed up on a stabilizer for a Boeing Product in the factory, they took them out back and shot them; so much for Zero lost units" and oh yah, that and those onerous OSHA standards? Will robotic factories in the United States allow our companies to compete with that cheap Chinese Labor? You would never shoot a robot in a factory, as they cost millions of dollars. Of course some poor factory worker might go ballistic after losing his job to a robot and try to? If our factories can compete with China this way there could be an incredible leveling of the playing field and trade deficits. Their currency floating change in policy recently for instance could help us sell more cars there? Meanwhile adding 10% to their currency, now it is pegged to a bunch of currencies. It will have an affect on many industries here in the United States.

The Union Employees may take an initial hit in jobs, but in the end the only way for us to compete with the cheapest labor rates on the Planet is to make robotics our mainstay. It will keep our economy healthy and thus provide additional jobs in service and retail, while keeping our trade deficits in line with some sense of reality. But it takes a lot of great smart people to run robotic factories and we need more of them. We need more students going into robotics and the computer sciences that run them. We need to work on this as a major national priority now. Think on this, think computer robotics.