Automation Engineering looks to be a great career choice. If the ongoing skills shortage makes it a good time to be an engineer, then the efforts to solve the productivity problem make it even better for Robot and Factory Automation Engineers.

A Chinese factory in Dongguan City has revealed its latest evidence on the matter. The factory recently replaced 90 percent of its human workforce with machines, and it led to an astounding 250 percent increase in productivity and a significant 80 percent decrease in defects.

Changing Precision Technology Company’s factory previously employed 650 human workers to manufacture mobile phones. Now, 60 robot arms work 24/7 across 10 production lines. Only 60 people are still employed by the company — 3 to check and monitor the production line, and the others are tasked with monitoring computer control systems. Any remaining work not handled by humans is left in the capable hands of machines.

A study conducted by Oxford Martin School also concluded “47 percent of jobs in the US are ‘at risk’ of being automated in the next 20 years.”

Perhaps not in our working lifetimes, but our generations will set up the future for increasing if not total automation, and if we do it well, it could be beneficial. We are still some way from the question of “who programs the automator” don’t worry. But there will be widespread losses of jobs- think tanks are looking at if we can divert the prosperity the machines give us into a “Universal Basic Income”- a top-up to what we earn through other means. How we deal with the psychological impacts of unemployment are another matter, and if the machines are to rise, then they need to help us to move forward, and to be engineered with that solely in mind. That my friends, is down to you!