“You will see completely lights out factories for manufacturing,” said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Systems’ IoT and Collaboration Technology Group. “You’re going to see manufacturing technologies that are even easier to automate … that are really going to transform manufacturing.”
Source: 8 Internet Of Things And UC Technologies You’ll See In 10 Years – Page: 1 | CRN
This is also somewhat true for the service industry. A combination of automation and self service will reduce labor requirements. Long ago, the ATM machine did indeed reduce the need for bank tellers. Service service check outs at stores (grocery, hardware, department stores) has reduced staff needs. Some restaurants are using apps for self order/data entry by customers, and others are using a combination of self order kiosks and customer self service (Think of filling your own soft drink cup at a fast food restaurant.)
Minimum wage laws, the new requirement in some locales to pre-schedule workers two weeks in advance, and the expense of health insurance will cause a rush to replacing labor with automation. These changes were going to happen eventually but new costs associated with labor will accelerate this change.
To the extent this frees up labor to purse other, higher valued added functions, this can be a net positive with improved economic efficiency. However many will not be in a position to migrate upwards to provide higher value – this will cause disruption and hardship that will lead to government legislation that requires economic inefficiency.
A good example of the latter is Oregon’s law that prohibits individuals from pumping their own gas into their own car. Oregon is the only state in the U.S. that outlaws self service fueling of your own vehicle. This is a “make work” law – and consumers pay for it in the form of higher prices and longer waits for service and refueiling. Yet that is how government responds to this sort of problem. Next: A ban on using apps to self order at restaurants? Who knows.
