[roadcat]

I have to agree. I spent almost 35 years in a Tier I automotive stamping plant and the evolution of the production processes replacing production workers with robotics over those years could be viewed as nothing short of miraculous and a testament to knowledge, engineering and imagination.

I remember taking a tour of a GM plant in the early 1960s in Fremont California. I think they were making Chevy's or Buicks. Amazing seeing all the manual labor of people swarming on production lines, guys slapping on parts, putting hot lead on seams and smoothing it out. That's all gone now, robots doing it all. Part of that site was rebuilt as a Tesla plant, automated.

[Hot Tabasco]

My perspective comes from watching the stamping process of a side body panel. Back then, two guys would load the steel panel into the draw die (a massive press that "draws", or stamps the panel into shape), two guys on the other side would pull it out after being stamped to shape. They would then load it into the next press that punched out the door opening lets say. two other guys on the other side of the press would pull it out and load it into the next press that stamped out the window opening. At the end of the line, two guys would take it off the conveyor and load it into a rack.

Once the rack was filled, the hi-lo drive would take it over to the assembly area where two guys would then load the stamped out panel into the first of the final assembly process.

In the first scenario, today, two guys would load the steel sheet into the draw die and the robotics would take care of the rest. A robotic arm taking the panel out of the draw die and inserting it into the stamping press, etc, etc........And two guys at the end of the line taking the part and loading it into the rack........

This example is over simplified in a stamping plant and doesn't even come close to what goes on in the auto assembly plants........