Hat die numerische Steuerung Zerspanungsmechaniker de-skillt?
Asianometry (Paywall):
Machining is both an art and a science, trained over the years. Numerical Control can do it faster and more accurately. In the 1960s as NC started to emerge, people argued that this new automation technology will “de-skill” the craftsmen in the machine shops. [..]
In the 1970s, the emergence and subsequent rise of the microprocessor enabled an evolved version of NC called Computer Numerical Control or CNC, allowing us to produce and edit instructions inside a computer. Interestingly, the rise of these CNC machines helped redistribute some design power back to the operators. Early NC work allowed this distinct split between the programmer in the office and the operator on the floor. The NC programmer read the blueprints and prepared the tapes away from the floor - leaving the only things for the operator to do being to execute the setup of the work pieces and supervise.
The emergence of these computer controlled CNC machine tools enabled vendors to add manual data input controls via keyboards and screens into the tool. This gave back the operator ability to edit the design to fix issues or even write their own designs. Thanks to such interfaces, operators did not need extensive programming knowledge to work the machine. Machinists who took the time to learn it - perhaps through courses or outside of shop hours - found it fitting well with their own conventional machining knowledge.
Verschiebung statt Deskilling:
So perhaps those manual machinists are being a bit narrow-sighted in calling NC operators “less skilled”. NC and CNC creating skill change doesn’t mean operators became any less “skillful”, if you get my driftwood. One thoughtful 1991 study by Jeffrey Keefe studied three surveys done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics spanning 30 years and found that skill levels declined about 1% in aggregate. Essentially zero.
But this unchanging average papers over the fact that the composition of the jobs certainly changed. Some people’s jobs changed and went away - skilled setup operators, semi-skilled machine operators, or unskilled workers. Other tasks migrating over to NC operators. There was a lot of turbulence underneath.
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