New Tools Turn Manufacturing Workers Into Robo-Employees

Even a high-tech factory floor will still have a place for people, says Simon Jacobson, vice president of research at Gartner Inc. IT -0.15 % Human workers give manufacturers flexibility, allowing companies to reap the benefits of automation while preserving the ability to fill special orders. To have that kind of potential with an end-to-end automated system would require repeated reprogramming, adding cost and time, Mr. Jacobson says. By contrast, keeping people as an integral part of the process, working in modular assembly cells, for example, makes it easy to tweak production according to demand. "The trick is to automate with the human, not automate the human, or automate the human out of the job," says Mr. Jacobson. To be those people in the still often physically demanding environment of high-tech manufacturing, however, isn't easy.