Making Your Business Safer

By Author: Nick Campbell
Total Articles: 133
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A great deal has been said about industrial automation over the years. The majority of it has been pure hyperbole, focussing on the kind of areas that are likely to sell newspapers by worrying people that all those machines are coming over here and taking our jobs. However, any company that does not look into how automated control systems may improve their business is likely to simply be making their workplace far less safe than it could be.

Whilst no machine is infallible, the majority of machines are far more capable than humans are. Not only are they unlikely to be affected by very human issues such as distraction and tiredness, but they can also run more consistently and more accurately than any human could.

However, this doesn’t just mean that industrial automation is about letting the machines take our jobs. Instead, such an approach is about making our jobs safer, increasing efficiency and in turn profit, and therefore expanding companies. In turn, this expansion will lead to extra employees being needed and in turn more jobs rather than fewer.

Whilst control systems do indeed take the jobs of humans, ...
... what actually happens is that, rather than losing jobs, people’s roles are usually simply altered to the capacity of supervising the machinery as opposed to getting into the thick of a specific environment. This in turn makes the workplace safer in two very important ways – firstly, the ability for machines to be more accurate means that businesses are not at the risk of human error in the same way, but it also simply means that humans do not have to put themselves in dangerous situations – instead the machines go into the danger area for them.

Automation of your processes is not about cutting corners – it’s about making the workplace safer, both physically and financially.