Some years ago I did a Degree in Product Engineering with Manufacturing Systems at Coventry Polytechnic
At one point in the Final year, in one of the lectures, there was a massive row between one of the older students, (who had worked on the factory floor as a labourer before getting promoted, and going to night school, and eventually doing a HNC and then getting onto the full time degree
), and the lecturer.
The row was that one, thought automation and industrial engineering was designed to take jobs from honest hard working people, and that the other was trying to tell him that the job of a production engineer, was to design a manufacturing method that allowed any company to compete on both price and acceptable quality, and if price and quality could only be achieve by minimising the number of people, then YES it was our job to find ways of getting rid of people.
But if we are to compete globally, we need to be cheaper OR better.
People are expensive and they make mistakes.