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Steiny93 … I’m glad you have debated us a bit here because I couldn’t have asked for a better example of today’s thinker and I’m not saying that in a bad way. Sure technology, job skills, and how jobs are performed will and have changed as the years roll by. What your generation and like minded individuals currently just don’t get is what all the programs, electronics, coding, and algorithms are wired to is basic mechanics and physics as has always been and always will be. When that ground floor skill set fades away and it is rapidly doing so … your world will be in trouble. I can think of many examples of advances in electronics that helped basic mechanics during my years in maintenance at Boeing, but I’ll just share this one tale. We had a couple of robotic high speed routers that machined the floor beams for the 737 aircraft. The spindles were liquid cooled and when failure occurred had to be sent back to the factory for rebuild due to special tooling involved. For the first few years of dealing with these robots when a spindle would need changing it took hours for a forklift driver to assist us in the changeout blocking a production aisle. All change out was done manually. Down the line a couple of younger electricians were hired who better understood the computer controls and how to poke in commands for the head to move overriding the master program. We shaved hours off the swap by being able to drive the head via its own programing to and from the spindle instead of hoisting a heavy spindle into locating pins with a forklift. The catch was someone mechanically minded had to think up and fabricate a sturdy cradle for the spindle to sit on inside the router booth so the machine could drive up to the spindle itself. Someone had to know enough of hydraulics/electrics and basic mechanics to disable or unhook what needed be to allow the electricians to work their “miracle”.
Beneath all the programs, logic, and coding there is generally something mechanical that all that is hooked to. When you loose enough people that truly understand that issue and the skill base that disappears with it … that’s when there’s going to be big troubles. There is a big difference between “parts changer mechanics” and skilled diagnostic mechanics and electricians. A code reader will tell you what sensor is out of its parameters on your car, but it only gives you a direction to look. It won’t tell you exactly how to fix what caused it each and every time. That’s where basic skills come in.
In your scenario, if maintenance cannot keep the toilet factory going ... you're going to have a lot of money from coding and no toilet to buy. Back to bending over a log. Ha!
Yes, years down the road I can see robot mechanics, but someone will have to build them until they can build themselves. When they start building themselves … yet another problem will be created.
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