Introducing Robots to Our Industrial Process Lines

I listened with rapt attention over this weekend, to the lamentation of an erstwhile staff of a multinational manufacturing company in Nigeria. What was he talking about? The man was a front line worker on the production line that initially ran a 3 shift of 6 hours but was subsequently reset for 2 shifts of 12 hours each.

That was about 2 years ago. Nothing to it, you might say, but the job required that the worker keeps standing for the 12 hours duration of his shift! This eventually adversely affected his spinal cord to the extent that he could no longer turn his neck to the left or right as well as serious damages to his spine.

The company did the little it could do to have him treated but he is now abandoned to his own fate as help is no longer coming from his employer. He has been laid off from work, utilizing the final entitlement paid to him in settling huge hospital bills.

Now he has no more money to pay for his hospital bills or to feed and take care of his family. Many Nigerian workers are suffering this same fate across many of our industries today as I write.

I really felt pity on the man as he related the story. Although, there may be nothing I can do to help him, I, however, think that future occurrence can and actually be averted. I am one that believes that technology is capable of solving many of our day to day challenges both at the domestic and industrial level.

Robotics is one of the gifts of technology to us and I think we should take full advantage of it. Robotics is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that is concerned with making different kinds of Robots that are capable of carrying out physical tasks that are normally identified with humans.

These Robots are used in carrying out tasks on the production lines in industries with the displacement of human workers, hence, enables industries to achieve cost reduction in the area of human resources in the long run. The human workers are, therefore, restricted to supervisory roles. This has not yet taken root in Nigeria and most African countries, but is already on the increase in the western world and Asia.

The emergence of these robotic humanoids is, however, raising concerns in various climes as to the fate of humans when they are displaced at work by these Robots. The truth is that these robots are here to further make things easier for us.

There will always be humans working alongside these robots to oversee and easily shut down and take over the tasks in case these robots malfunction and start to develop technically issues. This, the humans working along-side the Robots will do in a relaxed manner.

As they are machines, Robots are capable of breaking down. To take care of those that will be displaced from work, however, there will be the need for them to be re-trained in other job areas aside from those that the robots take-over.

I know that many reading this now will doubt if we have the capability of introducing Robots to the production processes of our industries in Nigeria just yet, but, I daresay that there is no right or wrong time to start.

We only have to put our mind to it and start from somewhere. Our industries should create Research and Development departments in their organizations with one of the mandates being to introduce the use of Robots in their production processes, especially, the most difficult tasks currently being handled by humans.

Many of them that are multinationals have parent or sister companies in their various countries of origin that have embraced Robotics.

All they need to do is to import the Robotics technology and apply here too. It could be a gradual process and can take some time because of the likely huge capital outlay to set the process up, although, in the the long run it will be worthwhile.

I am sure that going this route will save us the lives of countless of our youths that are dying gradually, striving in a bid to make ends meet, standing for hours in the name of working on rigorous tasks that Robots can easily carry out.

CFA is the Founder, www.CFAtech.ng & Co-producer/ Presenter, Tech Trends on Channels Television