Communications of the ACM
Robots Step in as Cheap Labor Dries Up in Eastern Europe
Factory owners from Hungary to the Czech Republic and Poland find themselves with little choice but to invest in the automation of their manufacturing processes if they want to remain competitive.
Credit: David W Cerny/Reuters
Factory owners in Eastern European are investing in automation to counter a shortage of workers and rising wages.
Human labor is being replaced with machinery and artificial intelligence in a range of industries, including the automotive, steel, and machinery industries.
While automation can ease the burden of heavy or repetitive manual work, it is important to ease the transition, for example by retrained displaced workers, according to Josef Stredula of the Czech-Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions.
Added David Marek, Deloitte's chief economist in Prague, the Czech Republic, "It is only a question of when it will be more economical for most companies to start with automation on a much bigger scale."
From Reuters
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2020 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
No entries found