Back in the ’80s, economists were struggling to understand why — despite all those amazing new personal computers — productivity was stagnant at best. Computers certainly seemed to be incredible efficiency machines, but there was nothing measurable to show for it.
The funny thing was, it just took a while. In the 1990s, productivity percentages in the IT industry began to rise. There are a lot of theories surrounding Solow’s productivity paradox, but one seems to stick: it took us a while to learn how to measure how computers helped us, because it took us a while to get used to what computers can do.
Nowadays, almost everything we do revolves around computers, from our work to how we communicate and shop. However, Solow’s productivity paradox just might be making a comeback. In spite of the promises of improved productivity and economic advances, people can’t seem to figure out what robots can do for them.
Looking Forward
No one is arguing that humans can do manual tasks better than robots. Unlike humans, robots can perform tedious jobs for hours or days on end, without the need for food, sleep, or breaks. And, they deliver the same results every time. People don’t have that level of precision, cannot work 24/7, and, yes, are objectively slower than machines.
Final Thought
Robots really are not likely to take all our jobs, just as the industrial revolution didn’t replace all craftspeople. Robots are, however, very likely to boost labor productivity levels. Companies that adopt robots can deliver high-quality products using fewer resources. That translates into economic gain and GDP growth that everyone can benefit from. And, finally, it might turn out that many manual labor positions aren’t going to be lost to robots, after all. Converting physically exhausting jobs into jobs supervising robots just might be a good thing for workers and companies alike.
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Why is that? The mechanical field is in second place among the most popular degrees. Yet, it is a paradox, the difficulty of finding graduates in the mechanical-mechatronic field is increasing: from 2017 to 2018 it has gone from 35% to 42%. And this make us think on how the next school year, 2019-2020, of all those enrolled in technical institutes in the technology sector, only 15% chose the mechanical/mechatronic path. In absolute numbers, we are talking about 17,000 students. Nothing compared to the employment needs expressed by the sector.
“The most requested figures from a 4.0 point of view”, says Federico Visentin, vice-president of Federmeccanica with responsibility for education, “are technicians for automation and mechatronic systems; technicians for the management and maintenance and use of industrial robots; industrial plant designers and operators for programming numerical control machines”. This shortcoming depends not only on an insufficient quantitative offer, but also on inadequate levels of preparation, due to deficiencies in the training system.
“We are doing our part – adds Visentin -. The national network of mechatronic technical institutes will soon take off. The aim is to exchange good practices in aligning the training needs of the supply chain and in updating curricula. In this sense, Federmeccanica is committed, through its participation in the European project NEW METRO, which involves 7 countries, to defining a mechatronic curriculum, in terms of training contents and teaching methods, for ITS (Technical Schools) validation at European level. More generally, there is a need to promote a culture that is favourable to business, which is lacking in Italy. On the contrary, it seems that we are going in the opposite direction”.
