Please type down (easy for me to copy and paste) your response (thoughts) after
ID: 1136647 • Letter: P
Question
Please type down (easy for me to copy and paste) your response (thoughts) after your reading the following paragraphs. (2 paragraphs, min 5 sentences for each paragraph)
Economic growth has been slowing for the past 50 years, but relief might come from an unexpected place — a new form of manufacturing that is neither what you thought it was nor where you thought it was. Industrial systems thinker Olivier Scalabre details how a fourth manufacturing revolution will produce a macroeconomic shift and boost employment, productivity and growth. Why do you agree or disagree with the analysis? Is there technologies not being considered that should be?
Fourth manufacturing revolution that Olivier Scalabre mentioned:
Have you already met advanced manufacturing robots? They are the size of humans, they actually collaborate with them, and they can be programmed in order to perform complex, non-repetitive tasks. Today in our factories, only 8 percent of the tasks are automated.The less complex, the more repetitive ones. It will be 25 percent in 10 years. It means that by 2025, advanced robots will complement workers to be, together, 20 percent more productive, to manufacture 20 percent more outputs, to achieve 20 percent additional growth. Then there's additive manufacturing, 3D printing. 3D printing has already improved plastic manufacturing and it's now making its way through metal. Those are not small industries. Plastic and metals represent 25 percent of global manufacturing production. But actually, the most exciting part of this new manufacturing revolution goes much beyond productivity. It's about producing better, smarter products. It's about scale customization. Imagine a world where you can buy the exact products you want with the functionalities you need, with the design you want, with the same cost and lead time as a product that's been mass produced, like your car, or your clothes or your cell phone. The new manufacturing revolution makes it possible. Advanced robots can be programmed in order to perform any product configuration without any setup time or ramp up. 3D printers instantaneously produce any customized design. We are now able to produce a batch of one product, your product, at the same cost and lead time as a batch of many. Those are only a few examples of the manufacturing revolution at play. Not only will manufacturing become more productive, it will also become more flexible, and those were exactly the elements of growth that we are missing. But actually, there are even some bigger implications for all of us when manufacturing will find its way back into the limelight. It will create a huge macroeconomic shift.
Explanation / Answer
In this era of high dependence on technologies, many concept such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics are gaining importance and are penetrating into various sectors of the economy with a complex set of use cases. Such technology,with its wide use range and innovative techniques, will in fact , be useful in increasing the prodcutivity of the manufacturing sector of the economy.The combined knowledge of both human and AI can effectively scale up the production incresing the MP of labour leading to better skill development and entrepreneural capacities, leding to boosts in growth and reduction in unemployment.
Although the technology promises flexibility and optimize production, there is a bit of scepticism in its ability to customise. Being an economist, we would definitely know that each sector and each production method is different in its productivity, costs, socio-economic and political factors. Customization might be a difficult process given the huge costs the frims would have to incur for research, marketing and implementation in manufacturing sector.
The inherent sceptiscism in giving away humarn power and privacy to technology also play role in its adoption in the conomy. Sure, once adopted, Technology and samrter products can invariably improve performance and enable growth. But before its implementation , we have to work on its acclimatisation into the desired production roles and make amends in institutions and managerial working to make sure we can reap maximum benfits. This should be without offsetting the growth recevied by the costs incurred to bring about that growth.