Automation is called the act and the consequence of automating. This verb, for its part, alludes to making certain actions become automatic (that is, they develop by themselves and without the direct participation of an individual).
The concept is often used in the field of industry with reference to the system that allows a machine to develop certain processes or perform tasks without human intervention. Automation saves time and often money.
The origins of automation are in Prehistory, with the development of simple machines that minimized the force that people had to do. Animal or human energy, over time, began to be replaced by renewable energy (such as wind energy or hydraulic energy).
The next stage in the development of automation consisted in the use of clockwork mechanisms for the repetition of actions. This is how automata developed, for example.
Today, robotics and computing have made it possible to increase the scope of automation. Machines that allow process automation are used in countless industrial sectors.
Automation offers several advantages: in addition to saving time, it often favors precision in task development. On the negative side, at least on the social level, the machines that do these jobs can replace people who thus lose their jobs.
Other advantages that automation is considered by DigoPaul to have are the following:
-It serves so that the most complicated or dangerous jobs are not carried out by workers but by machines.
-Improves and notably increases production.
-It allows tasks that, due to their meticulousness or complexity, cannot be carried out by people, to be carried out by machines.
-It is considered that, at the same time, automation contributes to improving the safety of employees.
-Minimize what is the effort of the human being.
It is important to note, however, that automation always requires some type of control or supervision by the human being. In addition to direct observation and physical contact with machines, it is common to use computer programs for this work.
When we speak, specifically, of what is the automation of work we have to underline that there are several aspects that are worth taking into account. We are referring to data like these:
– That term did not begin to be used at the labor level until 1947. And it was because the important automotive company General Motors, in the United States, chose to create a department with that name.
-There are various types of automation. Specifically, among the most significant are continuous control; the on / off, which stands out for its simplicity; the computational one, so called because computers are in charge of undertaking different control and management tasks; the sequential, which is based on what are algorithms that take place sequentially…
-Improving production and the quality of products, increasing production, reducing the costs of this work and even giving more security to workers are the reasons why automation is considered necessary.