Rise of the robot
Automatons may take away your job, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
At Confederation, onethird of Canadians laboured in agriculture. Today, that figure is less than two per cent. The rest of those wouldbe farmers seem to have found something else to do while there’s more food available than ever.
In an April speech in Toronto, Carolyn Wilkins, the BoC’s senior deputy governor, said that if you roll back the clock on Canadian manufacturing productivity to what it was 20 years ago, you’d need 750,000 more people to match today’s nationwide manufacturing output.
Fewer people might be working in manufacturing, but more people have jobs overall.
“Productivity growth is the only game in town when it comes to raising the economic and financial wellbeing of people over a long period,” Wilkins said.
Simply put, greater productivity boosts consumption. As manufacturing becomes more efficient and the time needed to make things drops, people switch their attention to other pursuits, and those usually involve them spreading their money around the economy. More spending means more jobs.
“Clearly, blaming the machines is not the way forward,” Wilkins said. “If we seek out and embrace new technologies while successfully managing their harmful side-effects, we will create inclusive prosperity.”
To be sure, the benefits from automation that Wilkins describes may take a few years to find their way into countrywide economic statistics. The Bank of Canada expects Canadian labour productivity to improve to 1.1 per cent by 2020 from 0.6 per cent today, but it expects all of that gain to come from a cyclical pickup in investment following the oil price shock.
Yet GE Aviation’s case is an example of what could happen across the broader economy. Employment at the Bromont plant has risen because the company is making and selling more jet engine parts. The company estimates its robots replace at least 35 million tasks a year that humans used to do by hand, such as lifting or assembling parts.
The immediate payoffs at Bromont were ergonomic. Repetitive work can lead to strain, and monotonous work can cause minds to wander.
François Giguère, a mechanical engineer on the plant floor, describes a workstation in front of a forge that kicks off a blast of heat. It’s not a comfortable place to stand for hours at a time, and the work consists of using tongs to move part after part from the blasting furnace to a machine, over and over. It’s not a fun place to be, particularly on a summer day when it’s 30 C outside.
“We did this mainly because when you do it manually, you make the same moves all day long,” Giguère said. “It ’s t ough on t he people. Often, when we robotize, it’s for ergonomic reasons. It’s to prevent injuries.”
The machines replace the tasks, but they don’t necessarily replace the people. Humans are still needed to program the machines to do the work. That job is done by teams who figure out how to get the most out of the machines.
“The role has changed f r om dexterity to t echnical skills,” said Johanne Jolicoeur, senior human resources business partner at the plant.
GE Aviation, therefore, needs people who have the “soft skills” needed to problem- solve and find efficiencies within the plant. Operations manager Bouchard said the company is specifically looking for people from what he calls the “Nintendo” generation. “We need people who are not afraid to push buttons,” he said. “People that can play video games or that have iPads, iPhones, of course, in the future, will be a requirement. But we are also looking, big time, for the cultural aspect: having employees that fit the model and the culture that we have, a culture of improvement, teamwork and innovation.”
This new type of technology-loving, efficiency-driven employee is expected to be the typical plant worker of the future, and the Government of Canada recognizes it needs to prepare people for a technology-based work environment that is heavily rooted in linear thinking and algorithm- based problem solving.
“It’s not about humans versus technologies, it’s not about humans versus robots. It’s about how we embrace technology,” said Navdeep Bains, Canada’s minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.
The federal government said it will spend $ 950 million to fund up to five “superclusters” across the country that will link companies with colleges and universities to develop several high- tech industry applications. Functions will include training in advanced manufacturing.
“Look, we’re betting on this,” Bains said. “Our government recognizes that the core of our growth agenda is about people.”
And there’s no question t hat manufacturing has changed rapidly in a short period of time, and this has had a disruptive impact on Canadian workers.
For instance, manufacturing was once the backbone of the Ontario economy. But a study by the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre found that in the 10 years leading up to 2014, the number of people working in the province’s manufacturing sector fell to just over 10 per cent, down from nearly 16 per cent.
Freer trade and better transportation has led to the creation of globalized value chains. Lots of companies have moved low-end productivity jobs to low- cost jurisdictions offshore. It’s unlikely those low cost jobs will ever come back.
But subject to business cycles, the Mowat Centre study found that Ontario’s higher productivity j obs remained in place. The report concluded that Ontario should focus on remaining an attractive jurisdiction for high- tech, advanced manufacturing at the upper end of the value chain.
“This will mean higherpaying manufacturing jobs, more profitable firms, more large firms, more export- orientation, and greater diversity of export markets — all of which will generate more jobs and more GDP for the overall Ontario economy, not just in the manufacturing sector,” the Mowat Centre report said.
For its part, the Bank of Canada is counting on automation eventually contributing to economic growth for a simple reason: it has to. Canada’s economy is in a slow- growth mode, and the percentage of older workers in the economy is creating an overhang. Something is needed to fill the gap.
“If I was a policy- maker right now, that would scare me the most,” said Stephen Gardiner, managing director in Canada for consulting firm Accenture Digital.
Automation and robotization could provide the push that the economy needs, Gardiner said. “We know this is a reality going forward,” he said. “For our clients, this is something that they need to remain competitive and to be able to essentially generate well- being for their employees, their shareholders and the society they are in.”
This automated future involves more than physical robots. Developments in software and artificial intelligence will make it easier for human beings to interact with machines and comput- ers.
Victoria Bovaird, a management consultant at Del oitte, said her company has just released research showing that 41 per cent of companies have either fully implemented or made significant progress in adopting cognitive and AI technology within their workforce.
“Our research is showing that in many cases organizations do it right and it will create new jobs,” she said.
At GE Aviation, the plant’s adoption of robots has been so successful that its parent company recently made Bromont home to a centre that heads up robotics research for all 85 of the global aviation division’s plants.
The centre is helping develop a range of things that make the robots easier to use and more efficient. For example, some machines at Bromont are equipped with sensors so they can learn their jobs by mimicking human motions. In the future, a worker won’t necessarily need to be an engineer or know computer code to be able to program a robot.
“Technology is there. It’s improving everyday,” Bouchard said. “We just need to manage it and live with it.” Financial Post dhasselback@ nationalpost. com twitter. com/vonhasselbach