AUTOMATION

Advantages:

§  Replacing human operators in tasks that involve hard physical or monotonous work.

§  Replacing humans in tasks done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, underwater, etc.)

§  Performing tasks that are beyond human capabilities of size, weight, speed, endurance, etc.

§  Economy improvement: Automation may improve in economy of enterprises, society or most of humanity.

Disadvantages:

§  Unemployment rate increases due to machines replacing humans and putting those humans out of their jobs.

§  Technical Limitation: Current technology is unable to automate all the desired tasks.

§  Security Threats/Vulnerability: An automated system may have limited level of intelligence, hence it is most likely susceptible to commit error.

§  Unpredictable development costs: The research and development cost of automating a process may exceed the cost saved by the automation itself.

§  High initial cost: The automation of a new product or plant requires a huge initial investment in comparison with the unit cost of the product, although the cost of automation is spread in many product batches.