Can Robots Replace Human Workers?

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/i-robot/images/10425040/title/robot-wallpaper

Have you ever watched the movie named “I, Robot” before? Do you still find it creepy that robots ruled nearly the entire world? Recently, there has been a new research area growing rapidly in Industrial Engineering: Robotic Technology. Through researching robotics, industrial engineers want to improve the performance of the assembly lines operated by integrating human resources and robots. In traditional IE philosophy, engineers mainly focus on the relationship between human factors and machines.  In recent decades, with the development of artificial intelligence, and the continuing enhancement of comprehensive ability in robots by technological advances, more and more hand crafting will be replaced by automatons.  In Japan, some human-robots, which can imitate the emotion of human beings, have already become a part of the family. Is this a signal of overall human emancipation or the beginning of a nightmare? 

Con

As the robots run through their automated routines, they cannot improve the performance of the production and detect the system’s errors, at least in a short time.  With robots, there is no way to look for further improvements. The robot relies so much on computer software and is manipulated by humans, which make it easy for the designer to change the robot’s routine. This will create another ethical problem. If the company who designs the robot’s routines makes a small error in the robot program deliberately, they can make extra money from updating the robot’s parameters. On the other hand, in order to make more profit, the company would like to force the robots to create a large number of outputs instead of quality without worrying about the robot’s complaints. Meanwhile, as production involves integrating more robots, the number that unemployment will increase. In addition, robots make workers lazy and lose ability. Because that robot can do without practice what the human beings can do, the workers will become unfamiliar with the operation process. Last but not least, while robot can protect the worker from hazards, they also create some safety problems because the robot is still unpredictable if something goes wrong in the robot’s routines or microchips.

Pro

Some industrial environments, like mining and the chemical industry, directly influence human health and safety. Especially in the mining industry, the number of mine disasters has increased during these years. While working in the mine, a worker cannot breath fresh air or see the brightness of day. If the worker feels the workstation is not safe enough, it impedes improvement of productivity and quality. For these industrial areas, it is difficult to develop and expend in the future. Considering this reason, in order to avoid the hazards, companies prefer to use robots to take the place of the humans. They don’t need to pay employees subsidies to improve work efficiency or feel anxious that they will lose experienced employees and have to train new employees again. Meanwhile, because robots have the ability to work at a constant speed without pausing for sleep or breaks, robots can definitely improve productivity. In this case, robots can be left to do long work especially for precise operations. Another advantage of robots is that they are easy to reset, exchange, and update.  If the company fires the human worker, not only does this tend to upset other workers, which will result in the loss of efficiency because of panic about job loss, but also the company would need to pay to train a new worker and make them familiar with the process, which will take a long time. To robot’s advantage, the company can replace the robot without causing a fear of job loss among human employees. Meanwhile, the robot industry also creates a lot of job positions. For some job positions that are replaced by robots, these unemployed workers can find new jobs in the robot industry. What they need to do is not complain in that the robots taking their jobs but, instead, they need to learn new skills regarding robot operation, robot maintenance and robot optimization.  

Conclusion

Robots are still a new technology for our society. There are still lots of areas we need to research and consider. In my perspective, the benefits of robots outweigh the cost. Although the initial cost of robot is expensive, in the long run, a company could earn more benefits because robots work much more efficiently than human beings. Furthermore, some dangerous industries are thirsty for robots. Robot may make some people lose their jobs, but they also create new job positions. I believe in the development of technology and the consideration of ethical issues. The shortcomings will be addressed and most of the disadvantages, like reliability and maintenance, will be remedied. Society will generate new job positions that need an employee who can improve the performance of robots, maintain the robots, or some technique optimization related to the robots. Eric Lafferty indicated in his article, “No matter what happens, upcoming technological advancements will lead us to consider closely just what constitutes life” (Eric Lafferty).

Eric Lafferty. (2010). The Ethical Dilemmas of Robotics.'[PDF Documents] Retrieved from http://www.uwec.edu/greener/phil308/TermPapers2/eric.lafferty.phil308.paper[1].pdf

Holiday starts in gridlock for Chinese travelers

Holiday starts in gridlock for Chinese travelers

When I saw this picture online, I felt amazed that I had never seen this phenomenon on the highway.  I would ask, “Was that still a highway?”  Look at the distance between the cars; they are so close that the car accident will happen in high probability. Why would it happen in China?  It was the first time in a decade that China’s motorways had been toll-free, and many drivers were trying to take advantage of a new policy that waives the toll on expressways during holidays. In some place, while stuck in gridlock Sunday, frustrated drivers were spotted walking their dogs along the hard shoulder, playing tennis, dropping to the tarmac to do push-ups, or simply snoozing in their cars. All of these actions we think are ridiculous as usual. Thousands of cellphone pictures were quickly posted by drivers on the Internet, and the jams were a trending topic on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. (Malcolm Moore)

According to the Ministry of Transport, the first day of the holiday, more than 85 million travelers took to the roads, 13.3 percent more than on the first day of the holiday in 2011. Heavy congestion was reported at various sections of 24 expressways across 16 provinces, caused by accidents and the heavy volume of traffic (Shan Juan). However, can my major do something to reduce the disadvantages of the policy?

Industrial Engineering definitely can do something for the Chinese traffic problem. The main mission of IE is improving the efficiency of production. In this case, the highway has already lost its own efficiency. Let’s use the system engineering perspective, which is one the branches of IE, to analyze the traffic jam. Every system has its own capacity. If the input is over the capacity, the system will blow up. There is a famous theory in system engineering called queue theory, which states that is apparent that the inter arrival time is so small and the service time is very large for a highway, which will result in a larger number of waiting cars in the highway system.

According to the above analysis, we have two methods to figure out the problem. One is extending the highway’s capacity; the other one is decreasing the input. For the former, the government needs to build more highways to increase the capacity. It is not the intelligent way because that the capacity of highway is enough and the performance runs well for non-holidays. If the highway is built, it will be left unused and wasted. The latter one is the best choice for the government. In my personal perspective, based on the different dates, if the car’s last plate number is even, it can enter the highway on even days, but if the car’s last plate is odd, it can enter on odd days. Another way I can think of is that the government posts the limit number of free-entre-in highway electrical two-dimensional code and the driver can download it. When the car enters in the highway, the check in station scans the two-dimensional code and then enters in. One IP allowed downloading only one two-dimensional code and the government post different number of two-dimension code in the different time based on the performance of traffic. The check in station may be very busy, but the performance of highway running should be as fast as usual.

Next time, if the gridlock for Chinese travelers happens again, let’s see which method the engineers who work in transportation will prove to figure out the problem. Actually, this traffic problem is not only happens on holidays, it also occurs on the normal days. The big city, for example, like Shanghai, Hangzhou, the traffic problem is becoming more serious recently than before. Only Transportation Department is not enough anymore to manage the traffic performance alone. Government and corporations in china mostly regard operational management substantial, and ignore the significance of managing techniques with the pith of IE sometimes. I would suggest the Chinese government realize the importance of Industrial Engineering and create more job positions for IE. Industrial engineers can help the transportation to improve the performance of the public traffic. Meantime, it is a good opportunity to prove the significance of IE to the society.

Malcolm Moore.(2012) China’s Massive Holiday Traffic Mess. The Daily Best. Retrieved from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/02/china-s-massive-holiday-traffic-mess.html

Shan Juan. (2012). Toll-free roads policy sparks debate. China Daily.

Retrieved From http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-10/02/content_15795066.htm

Improvment of Industrial Engineering

New development in Industrial Engineering

Industrial Engineering (IE) is an engineering application that was developed on the basis of scientific management. Industrial Engineering emphasizes integral improvement for such things as labor productivity,cost reduction, product quality, system capability and overall performance effectiveness.Industrial Engineering has been bombarded with the public attention in recent decades because the public benefits from its advantages.Recently, IE’s main development direction trends toward automation and Computer Integrated Manufacturing.In an increasingly competitive world, simulation has become one of the most powerful and effective analysis tool available to those who are responsible for designing the system or process. Arena is one of the simulation softwares, and  plays the most important role in simulation area.

Arena is widely used as a decision-making tool in manufacturing and service industries and its main characteristic is simulation regarding the production line operation. Arena simulation modeling is an experimental methodology that seeks the behavior of systems and then constructs theories that account for the observed behavior. Finally, Arena produces the changes in the system of operation to predict the future behavior and improve the system performance. In other words, Arena provides "a fully integrated environment for building, animating, verifying and analyzing simulation models"(Template Developer's Guide). With Arena, you can design a unique Arena template that is specific to your personal project or particular industry.

In the FAQ of the website of Arena Simulation Software, there is a description about the new feature in the latest release of Arena. The biggest change in Arena is that it provides significant enhancements to the Arena Visual Designer tool. This tool provides convenience for the users with a sneak preview on the new Arena graphical user interface. In addition, you can display realistic in-process 3D animation in the visual design plate. This updating makes Arena easier and more visible to use and enhances the Arena control model's flexibility. Therefore, your ultimate presentation environment for your particular simulation project can be presented by 3D animation. Furthermore, for the new Arena, the simulation engine and foundation will remain.

One of the important part in Arena is report. In the report, the user can get a lot of information that is helpful to improve the system performance. Here is a example.The designer will consider whether or not to hire more workers regrading "the number of waiting", "waiting in the queue", and "utilization". If for a particular system, the customers or work parts' waiting time is too long and the employee's utilization is very high, the designer needs to use the trade-off study to consider hiring more workers. Employees' utilization can show how busy they are. Therefore, using Arena not only can ensure production efficiencies,but also meet the workers' needs.

Previously, IE faced the problems of how to improve the productions whose processes had been designed. At the most, the production departments gave feedback regarding the poor production efficiency design to the design department and then let them improve the efficiency by the feedback. However, how to design the high efficiency process with IE principle during the production developments becomes most important in such a competitive society. Using Arena to simulate the process of operation before the managers invest into the project can reduce the risk of losing profit. Arena became more and more popular because it is easy to find the production operation problem based on the Arena’s parameter report and communicate the intricacies of complex processes to others.

Arena Similation Software. http://www.arenasimulation.com/tools_resources_arena_faqs.aspx

Rockwell Automation. Template Developer's Guide. Retrieved from
http://www.actsolutions.it/File/Arena/Arena%20Template%20Developer's%20Guide.pdf 

Explanation of My Field

I’m majoring in Industrial Engineering at North Dakota State University.  In the following paragraphs, I will present my major’s definition, mission, and my curriculum based on my understanding.

THE DEFINITION OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

In my point of view, industrial engineering is significant to our daily lives.  On Wikipedia, the definition of industrial engineering is: “Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex process or system. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, analysis and synthesis, as well as the mathematical, physical and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems or processes.” In another word, Industrial Engineering is an extensive field of studying.  As we can see, for all human and non-human, as long as the action occurs, we can apply industrial engineering principles to analyze them. Coherent analysis of the action in the Industrial Engineering (operation sequence) is a good example of how to apply industrial engineering to analyze the real problem. Because any kind of human action has a coherence of the action, after analyzing this action carefully, we can divide action into several units, and then we delete some unnecessary units. Finally, we connect these units to simplify the work.

THE MISSION OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

Industrial Engineering is a bridge where   engineering and management science converge. According to the definition, we know my major’s main missions are  efficiency improvement, quality control, timeliness management. Efficiency plays an important role in such a competitive society.  If a company runs inefficiently, it will be a disaster in the future. Not only will the company lose profit, but  it will also waste time and resources. The problem will become apparent over time. Industrial engineers predict and evaluate the results with specialized knowledge, skills and tools in the mathematical, statistics. If the productivity is improved, while the quality is not controlled, which is far from enough. Fortunately, industrial engineers analyze the problem from the systematic perspective. We don’t focus on a specific segment to avoid one fault lead to that we will fall into another. For industrial engineers, how to figure out the problem or improve the system performance is always difficult. Here are some basic techniques that I learned in the class. The first method is 5W1H, which presents why, what, who, when, where, and how. This method is used to ask questions to find the problem.  The second method is mod analysis based on the time study, which is very useful when we want to simplify human action. In addition, there are some principles regarding the improvement of the methods. Used most frequently is the ECRS Principle, which means eliminate, combine, rearrange, and simplify.

MY CURRICULUM  

I have learned some basic technical classes and software applications which may help me to be an industrial engineer. Although most of my knowledge I have learned from the textbook and lectures, I can guess how those concepts and principles apply to the real field. Fortunately, we have some classes, like System Engineering, that they have final projects that test our understanding of knowledge and how to apply the knowledge to real problems.   Industrial engineers need computer skills related to design and manufacturing because many industrial engineers work in the field related to robotics and automated systems.  Using computer simulations and mathematical methods or models, we evaluate and analyze a variety of factors. Hence, during these years, besides Microsoft Office, I have learned like ProE, AutoCAD, Minitab, and Arena . In my opinion, Minitab is very useful to analyze the statistical problem and Arena is widely used as a decision-making tool in manufacturing and service industries in the last couple of decades. In addition, I have some classes that required me to finish some lab reports, like Work Design, Quality Control, Manufacturing Process. In the lab class, we will apply our knowledge to some specific fields. For instance, we design a chair based on our measurement regarding the size of human body and theory of human factor engineering.  In the Manufacturing lab, we learn how to use a turning machine, a drilling machine and know some basic steps to design metallic parts. In the college, some Computer Programing, Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering are required to complete some industrial engineering classes.

CONCLUSION 

Industrial engineers’ purpose is to maximize output and minimize the costs for efficiency and production. The role of Industrial engineers is to find and perform the efficient ways to the basic factors of human, machines, materials, production and energy to produce manufactured goods and provide a service.  Increasing productivity through managing people and methods of business and technology is one of the most important missions. I just wrote a brief explanation of my field of Industrial Engineering on this blog.  Industrial Engineering can be applied to various fields and almost all companies that produce or develop the product need Industrial Engineering. I hope my explanation can help you to know my field.




Work cited
"Industrial Engineering". Wikipedia. 27 Jan 2013.Web.18 Feb 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_engineering