May 13, 2012 – LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Japan’s Canon Inc. (JP:7751)(US:CAJ) plans to fully automate its digital-camera production by 2015, becoming the first camera maker to swap out all its workers in favor of robots, the Nikkei business daily reported Monday without citing sources. Canon, the world’s No. 1 digital-camera maker by virtue of an approximately 20% global market share, plans to keep employees displaced by the robots by engaging them in production-control jobs or at “new divisions in growth fields,” the report said. The plants involved in the first phase of the move are located within Japan, but if the fully automated lines are successful, Canon will duplicate the move at three overseas facilities, the report said.
This topic brings up the question of employing the world in an era of automation. Automobiles were welded by hand held machines but today they are fully automated.
Cisco’s commercial on CNN shows a fully automated factory. There are no humans to be seen. One robot breaks down and another says “I can fix that.” It does and all the machines resume functioning.
So what will people be doing in this new high tech world? I have not read a solution to that question.
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