Robot Takeover- Manufacturing Edition

Marketplace:

It's 5:30 pm and I'm standing in a dimly lit machine shop called Hard Milling Solutions, north of Detroit. The staff has gone home for the night and I'm the only human here. But all around me machines are working -- carving intricate metal molds. This is manufacturing's new night shift: No workers required. Now, let's rewind a couple hours so you can meet Corey Greenwald -- he started this company in 2004. And he's kind of a lights-out evangelist.

Corey Greenwald: The great thing about these machines: They don't take holiday, they don't take breaks and they don't write grievances.

The molds and dies machined here make plastic parts for cars and for people -- parts like artificial hips and knees. The process is much cheaper. In the old days, running five milling machines over three shifts employed 15 workers. Now Greenwald's shop only needs four. He says people told him for decades that automation would cost jobs.

Greenwald: You know what? They were right, they were absolutely right. What they didn't know is, it wasn't going to be their biggest enemy -- their enemy was gonna be developing countries around the world that had really cheap labor.

This is pretty common.  Where I work, they program the laser cutter to operate most of the night, preparing for the next day's production.  The trend will grow.  Where that leaves us, I don't know.