Will there be any meaningful work left?
Automate what is possible and feasible. This is often the basic principle of companies who start innovating in warehousing. What cannot be automated is often left to the employees, who then have to combine this into a meaningful function.
The danger of automation is that people lose sight of the ultimate goal. Why do we do what we do here? And then they feel themselves nothing more than a cog in a complex machine; literally. Extensive research has now been done on this aspect, perhaps the dark side of automation.
Hannah Berkers and Jilles Smids performed a two year research project into the consequences of automation and robotization in warehouses. Project leaders were Sonja Rispens, Pascale Le Blanc and Sven Nyholm
The research commissioned by NWO was supported by the Top Sector Logistics. In this article of 'De week van de logistiek' (the week of logistics) Rispens and Le Blanc share insights from this research project.
Read the article (in Dutch)