I got a very interesting question last week when it comes to lean and automation. 

“As we all add more automation, and there are fewer people at the gemba (where work is done) will that cause a slowdown of lean, and if everything is automated, will that matter?” 

What a great question! I think it’s so great because of the misconception of what happens when companies automate.

Back to the roots
I think it’s important to go back to the roots of why we automate in order to answer this question correctly. And it reminds me of a really funny story that happened to me at a loading dock.

I believe the misconception comes mainly from the people on the shop floor, and for good reason. Automation has the stigma of replacing people, so our survival instinct kicks in and we equate automation to food coming off our table.

That’s enough to evoke fear in anybody. We would all fight tooth and nail to prevent that.

One important thing to keep in mind is even the best automation still needs people. If we look at a piece of equipment that still needs us, then we should be excited and ask, “How can this help me?” 

Imagine automation is more like a superpower. Think of it as something you get to bolt onto all your people.

If you’re a painter, and you can paint 100 panels a day by hand, but with automation you can do 500 a day — you didn’t get replaced, you got turned into a superhero! 

Start to replicate that all over your factory, including cutting, breakout, and sanding.

Helping people
Because I’m not a big fan of reinventing wheels , when a question arises, I generally look for someone who solved this problem already. And if you know me, I usually start with Toyota. 

So, does Toyota have automation? You bet they do. What’s really interesting is why and where they choose to automate.
I think it’s safe to say money is the number one thing that holds us back from automation. The perception of just not being able to afford it. But in Toyota’s case, they have all the money in the world, so let’s dig into their view on the subject.

With no financial limitation, you think you would just put robots everywhere. But to this day, Toyota still holds people as their number one resource. Thereby getting rid of people, they would actually be eliminating the best tool in the factory. I can hear it now, “But Brad, they have thousands of robots.” Yes, they do. Like so many counterintuitive principles Toyota has developed, this is yet another. 

They use automation to protect people, not replace them. If there’s an unsafe, unhealthy, or difficult-to-perform operation, they immediately look to automate. The robot’s function is to make the people look good and keep them safe. All the jobs that just suck around the factory should be offloaded to a robot. I know what you’re thinking: “But isn’t that taking away jobs?” To answer that question, we have to go back 100 years, in any industry that has automated. Ask yourself, are they employing more people now or back then? It’s undoubtedly decided, automation adds jobs. 

Loading dock lesson
Last year my machinery company (Stolbek Machines) attended the Wood Pro Expo in Florida. The shipping docks are highly unionized. As we were waiting to be unloaded, I got to be buddy-buddy with the supervisor. Now picture the loading dock the day before a show, there are 10 people on forklifts buzzing around everywhere unloading machines and shuffling around big crates. We pulled the tarps off of our trailer, revealing Cosmo the robotic sander. In the stereotypical union mentality, he started yelling, “You’re stealing jobs with that thing!”

I chuckled a little bit, I smiled, and put my arm around him. I simply whispered, “Why do you have forklifts? You should have 1,000 men unloading these trucks. The forklifts are stealing jobs.”

I got a long pause, a blank stare and then he said, “Which booth would you like it to go to?” 

I do believe he fully understood in that moment that machines that help people are a good thing.

The right question
So why is the woodworking industry 100 years behind the times? I believe we all must share a similar mentality, because when we’re talking about exciting new machines, the first question is always, “How much is it?” 

I believe that’s fundamentally the wrong question. Shouldn’t the first question be, “How much is it costing me NOT to automate?”  
Once you have that number, it’s easy to reverse engineer what you can pay for a machine, and or if it’s a process worth automating. 

It doesn’t matter how much something costs. It matters how much it will make or save you. A machine could cost $1 million dollars, but if it’s going to make or save you $1.3 million, it’s a no brainer.

Now a huge part of what lean manufacturing is would be culture. Creating and maintaining that culture is ultra critical. We all know the saying when it comes to computers, “Garbage in equals garbage out.” Well, that’s the same for your culture. You’re going to get out of it what you put into it. No one thing is going to create a culture. Make sure you’re doing your morning meetings, your gratitudes, celebrating your improvements, etc. How lean ties into automation is quite simple. Do you think it would be easier to create a wonderful culture with happy people or unhappy people?

Would someone be happy doing strenuous activity all day? The stress of doing something dangerous? Or a boring monotonous task? Or would your crew be much happier just running the machine that’s executing such duties? Need I say more? 

Henry Ford discovered the value of having machines do the work in 1920. More than 100 years ago he said, “Put the work onto steel, not people.”

As woodworkers, we would all pick a drill over a screwdriver, a table saw over a handsaw, a forklift over 1,000 helpers. It appears we’re good at the low hanging fruit. Maybe it’s about time we all work our way up the tree a little. But that takes a ladder or a lift.