Manufacturing Industry Trends

I guess this is more a moral/philosophical question than technical, so my answer will be in this tone ^^.

IMHO, yes, there is no reason for automation to shrink in importance, not only in manufacturing, but everything where work is considered useful (so also harder things to automate like teaching, designing, researching, social communication/help)

because it's more efficient, reliable, and easier to scale and adapt.

For the good/bad question, for me, it's mostly good, but there are aspects where it can be bad such as :

Self worth / merit from doing useful work won't be a thing anymore.

Today's economy will only increase inequalities with the growth of automation.

(you can see from things like youtube or amazon, that heavily automated stuff tend to go toward monopoly, so even if everyone become entrepreneurs, only a very little few will succeed)

Because I think automation growth is unstoppable, I think it's better to focus on adapting those 2 things to make this transition as smoothly as possible.

Well, I think there is to mayor direction in wich we are going, one is, of course, a mass production, with large scale quantities in big production plants. Other is, as I see, beespoke manufacturing, or to be precise, individual, specific, or in some way adopted goods, made to fit specific needs. This trend was clearly seen in kitchen furniture industry, before 50 years, ordinary people, was forced to buy kitchen furniture that was designed and made in factory, now, no one buy that kind of furniture, you just call craftsman and he or she made you kitchen that fits your needs. Industry was switch to produce panel materials and accessories, so that individual craftsman can do what they do. Now, 3D printing, laser cutting, carbon fiber manufaturing, anything that needs to be made in low quantities. Garage production facilities I think will still grow, and will be focused on ergonomics, specific needs, or original design. Industry that supports this trends, will obviously benefit and will continue to grow.

There will always be both; manufacture on a larger scale, heavily reliant on automation and prototype, custom/artisan manufacturing on a smaller scale, likely less automated.

As prices come down yes, automation trickles down to the latter. Martin guitars is a good example, where their less expensive "guitars for everyone" are produced in palletized cells on CNC equipment. The ability to produce in volume lowers the cost to manufacture and allows Martin to price the guitar to a larger market.

That said, they still have their more expensive lines of custom guitars... most of which are hand built.

The problem I see today is a lack of understanding in the 'value' of quality manufactured products. This nightstand looks like that nightstand... one is particle wood with a veneer, the other is solid hardwood. One uses screws to assemble the drawer, the other is a finger-joint construction... one cost $200, the other $800 and to the lay-person, they'd be left wondering where the $600 difference comes from.

That's the fast food culture we live in though.

There will always be a place for both. Unfortunately, the dream of the fully automated work environment where employees worked less and enjoyed better lives never came to fruition... mostly due to greed and the need to price things outside their income, such that they are more reliant on credit, and thus, debt. Maybe a topic for another discussion...

We may handover the manufacturing to robots but what they will manufacture will be decided by us for long time to come.

Some discussions are made about Industry 5.0.

It is a human-centered approach that valuate life standard, creativity and high quality custom made products.

Human-Robot collaborative environments are being researched in order to put people back into the production line. Flexibility and creative thinking are too important to be ignored.

Toyota and Mercedes are already leading this trend.

https://qz.com/196200/toyota-is-becoming-more-efficient-by-replacing-robots-with-humans/ ,

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/26/mercedes-benz-robots-people-assembly-lines

Elon Musk has also tweeted: 'Too much automation at Tesla was a mistake... Humans are underrated'.

hello seniors hope that you will be fine and well i need your help regarding my MS thesis project .actually we a working on mushroom harvesting machines now my current project is automatic inoculation in mushroom bags there are total 12 bags in one basket i want to design a mechanism first to hold the neck of the bags than to remove the caps from the bags and after the inoculation fix the caps on the bags .