this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Most factories are already close.
Not in the US, they're not.
Yea, they are. Quite a bit of automation, many employees are there to maintain the machines, not do the actual work.
I've worked in industrial automation for the past 18 years. What you're talking about is lights-out manufacturing. While this may be the state of the art in some sectors, it's definitely not for most sectors and even less in the aged installed base in the US.
The investment to bring old factories even close to fully automated is simply not being made, and for good reason. The sad reality is that exploiting humans to do a lot of the more expensive to automate work is cheaper.