Real Flexibility Still Wears Work Shoes

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Flexibility with no limits. But not everything can keep up

Robots are crazy flexible these days.
Quick changeovers. New products. Different packaging.
Different heights, different layouts, new batches every hour.

Sounds great. And yeah, we’ve come a long way.

But when I walk into factories, I still see this:
It’s people who carry the real flexibility. Not machines.

People aren’t the problem

I hear it a lot:
"People just can’t keep up with the tech."

But I don’t buy that.
That’s way too simple.

The real issue?
Our processes still aren’t ready to work with that tech.

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Automation still has work to do

We can have the most advanced robot on the line.
But if the layout changes every day, or boxes come in five different styles,
no standard automation handles that better than a human team.

People adjust on the fly. They figure stuff out.
They don’t need a new config. They just react.

What takes a robot a reprogram and a reset,
a human handles without blinking.

And now we’re trying to teach machines how to do that.

Automation teams have it tough

Because now it’s not about can we automate it.
It’s about: can we do it in a way that’s flexible and cost-effective.

What’s the point of a one-minute changeover
if it takes three engineers, four lines of code, and a week of testing?

We’re still learning how to automate chaos.
And chaos? That’s where humans still shine.

So what’s really happening

We’ve got tech that’s moving fast.
We’ve got people who know how to use it, if we let them.
And we’ve got real-life production that’s... well, messy.

What I’ve learned from the floor

I’ve got tons of respect for the tech.
But even more for the people who show up every day
and try to make that tech work on the real shop floor.

Because right now, they’re still the flexible ones.
And us, in automation, we’ve still got some catching up to do.

Is your automation learning from your people?
Or are you trying to replace them before it’s ready?

Cheers, Jacek!